Singularity
by CeliaBlair24
Summary: He remembers the lull of the ocean, the salt in the breeze. The blue of the skies, and earnest, familiar eyes. He may not remember his name, but he remembers well enough, and that's okay. —Life in "The Apartments" is cyclic at best, but after a near run-in with the Avengers, one occupant finds himself willing to test fate in an attempt to remember the life he'd had before.
1. Prologue: He

_It is you who I seek in the shadows_

 _You who my mind wanders to._

 _It is you who I wait for_

 _In the room numbered 214._

 **Part One**

IN a world that is ever changing, he finds that life— or rather, _his_ life— remains cyclic, routine.

Morning breakfast is rather dull; two slices of toast, tea and maybe some honey, though he does find some enjoyment in the locally-made strawberry jam (which he has stockpiled in the very back of the small kitchen's cupboard). The local newspaper is delivered through the slot in his apartment door, always on time, 8 o'clock on the dot. Always exciting, if taxes and American politics could be called such. Until noon, he spends his time on sudoku and the crossword puzzles in the back pages of the paper, save for Tuesdays and Thursdays, when he has a visitor over instead.

Just before lunch (assorted fruits, and the occasional pastry from the bakery across the street— at least, that's what Steven tells him when he hands them over on his mornings off) a friend stops by. _Natalie_. She's not much too warm of a woman, but she has a mind faster than bullet trains and a mouth almost equally as impressive.

 _In the unwritten log situated just right of his pituitary gland, he'd reckon she's about the only person he's spoken to whom he's actually quite alright with. (Steven lost his title when he'd over indulged himself his honey, and quite nearly ruined breakfast with how little he'd left)_.

They play chess in the three-hour interim between breakfast and lunch (she is quite the strategist, he'd admit his share of losses easily enough), sharing quips and commentary on the world beyond. She's quite the listener and quite the talker, and he finds she's a most splendid company. She's gone soon enough however, always busy, always late. He's quite used to her abrupt leaves, however, so he continues on his day as always.

A novel after lunch (always something new as he's never been one for rereading), a short nap afterwards. When the sun is low and close to setting, he flicks on the television set and critiques the baffling idiocy of American prime time and goes through what Natalie calls "the motions" of killing every last one of his brain cells waiting of the 7 o'clock movie premieres (Fury was fantastic, Gone Girl was thrilling, he'd do well without Divergent, however).

Dinner is a little earlier, at 6 o'clock always. Though _Friends_ has its moments, he finds that the overarching plot is only a little less mind numbing then the rest of what's on currently (also, Ross and Rachel have been on an off in their relationship, and he finds it just isn't so interesting with them separated), and he can ignore it long enough to make a quick salad before Chandler reappears and sets right the wrongs of American sopes (a running theme, he finds).

Unlike the rest of his day, set and ready to the very point, sleep comes as sleep is wont. Sometimes, easily enough, and he's dozing off shortly after 10 within the fluffed confines of his poster bed. Other times... other times not so much, and he finds himself staring out the windows instead, the sound of city traffic dulling out his senses 'til darkness is more alluring than the starless, smog clouded skies. Nights like those, though fear he knows plays no part of it (no, not at all), he thinks of life, ever moving, ever changing, and how so very stagnant his is in comparison.

It is no use, envying what he cannot see, cannot fathom, but between the reach of consciousness and not, his thoughts muddle enough that he allows himself to.

He wonders then, what it is like in the world outside, beyond the four creaking walls of his tiny apartment.

He wonders what it would be like, if his every day could be different.


	2. The Man

"Early bird gets the worm. Usually. You don't seem so up to task today…Natalie?"

There's a tension in Natalie's shoulders, set so ramrod straight you'd think a pole had been stuck through to hold her there. She is unperturbed by this, seemingly. Smirking through the building tension with knife sharp charisma.

"Check."

The game had been forfeit the moment he'd turned mind and heart another way. He didn't quite care.

"Mate."

He says later on, King at a crossroad with Rook and Knight and Queen, blocked on all sides, cornered within an inch of himself.

"You're distracted. I'd think I was worth more than half your attention span. Where's the other half at?"

He gives her a look, long and cutting.

Eyes half shut, lips pursed, pale. The makeup could only cover so much.

"Steven promised to come by, lunch on some Thai in the restaurant a block over— well, he says it is a block over, I wouldn't know either way,"

Natalie shifts in her seat, an imperceptible thing for one who knew her less. Fingers tap along deep mahogany, the low table set against the corner of the room wall. She smiles charmingly then, dimpled and sincere.

"Want me to stick around?"

A flash beyond the windowsill, the world comes to. The pitter-patter of rain on rock and tile is familiar, catching along the breeze and brushing up against the glass panes still not quite shut. Natalie makes to stand, yet he's up before she is, hand out and smile unwavering.

 _Let me._

The hatch is just barely open, and from this high up, the rain is an unwitting burke against the white noise of distant horns and car engines.

 _A flash._

He looks onwards, from where the heavens crest into the pinpoint spears of the distant high-rise.

 _Another flash._

Lightning zaps through thundering clouds, a spider-web of incandescent fury sizzling through the rain. He watches on, waits out the quaking rumble of thunder, fingers shaking and breath caught.

The hatch falls into place.

* * *

 _Salted air, the wet of the breeze muggy against the pallor of clamoring skin and chattering teeth. Home is the water, blackened by night and warm as the suns of great, shining Asgard._

 _The roar of the falls is a distant sentry to the ears and eyes and hearts of her citizens, warrior and civilian, nobleman and peasant, the reminder that they all share one blood in this backwater wasteland of old. Gold gleams unpleasantly in the face of distant galaxies, the expanse of the sky rooting through from one tip of the flat planet to the other. There, the castle, the organ-piped amalgamation of towers and gold and stolen-splendor, rests itself against the breast of the home of the Gods._

But I am no God.

 _He drags himself along dirt-crusted sands, thick of robes and armor sliding already halfway off thin shoulders. The wind is unforgiving this night, whistling through, a compassionless being. Bringing cold and the whispers of rain, if not snow, if not hail._

 _A woman stands before him, features entrenched by the dark of night and a deep gold shawl thrown over her figure._

 _"Mother,"_

 _He says, for stature and grace would sooner betray her in the face of seeking, desperate, familiar eyes._

 _"What have you done?"_

 _Words barely a whisper, carried by wind and the floral warmth of magic. The waves eddy around his feet, licking after the taste of blood on healing wounds, the thin of bone and paper-skin._

 _And the horror on Mothers face almost makes worth the misery._

* * *

"How's Nat?"

The day before last— more precisely— yesterday, Steven had taken it upon himself to squeeze his sizeable bulk into the much too shortened span of his early morning. He'd claimed boredom at first, yattering on, short-sentenced about the woes of his one-room, ramshackle apartment, that being as he is in similarly dire straits (he really wasn't, he had F.R.I.E.N.D.S reruns, tea) he may as well "talk a lil". And it wasn't that he was particularly against the friendliness, nevermind his own baseborn tendencies, insomuch as the jury would allow, he was at least polite company. Mostly. This, he regretted then as he does now, borrowing himself into the soft of woolen blankets as Steven makes his rounds from kitchen to living room in preparation for their "mov-athon".

He was sure the name was not so, but he kept at least that to himself, the patience for explanation, after all, had never truly seemed to be a strength of his.

"Fine,"

He says, teeth gritted, eyes trained on the glossy surface of the living room flat. The CD player hung out beneath width, disk from the day before last still inserted.

Steven scurries into the room then, bowl of popcorn in hand. There, beneath the cavalier of his wide-stretched smile, telling wrinkles of worry. Doubt.

"You could talk to her, Steven. I doubt she'd mind the imposition"

Steven pops the CD into the player, fiddles with the remote until the screen blinks on and then he's rushing up to the couch, cushions wheezing in protest of his weight. He's about to complain, maybe squeeze a bit more in terms of answers from him. No such luck.

The movie begins.

"Borne Identity, Tony recommended it, said the irony was hilarious,"

He gives him a long look, and maybe, behind his back and away from the littleness of his apartment, they talk of him, Steven and Natalie. Because Steven looks away quickly then, ears red and fingers playing along the hem of his nightshirt.

Not as smart as Natalie, no. But Steven definitely _knew_ where his mind lay.

"Ah,"

He talks no more than this, watches through title card and opening scene as the movie plays out before him. Steven, statue-stiff and near equally cold, places a hand on his shoulder and draws from the movie his attention.

"She hasn't said anything to you, has she?"

Cerulean blue eyes, shining bright as the morning sky. He could almost taste it, then, salt on the air and in the wind. The sound of waves lapping, the lull of the boat, the world caving in. Familiar, oh so familiar.

 _Earnest._

"If she had, you wouldn't be here,"

He says simply, removes Stevens' hand; turns his cheek.

The movie plays out, a man out of time and luck and memory.

He would laugh, but his throat constricts around the sound bubbling through. Constricts still around the sudden muck of breath sat stale in his chest.

Beyond four cornered walls, blinds now drawn and windows shut, thunder pursues the strike of light arching off the clouds in skies covered.

Somehow, this relaxes him, body and spirit and mind.

* * *

 _" —and you're okay with this?"_

 _"It's a while back to your apartment, and rather late as well. Don't you hear the rain?"_

 _"I — yeah, I do. So the couch?"_

 _"Take my bed."_

If indeed time were sentient, perhaps it would scold his lonely visage, pull at dark locks and long limbs, try, however futile, to sully his line of waking. If, indeed time were sentient, perhaps it would simply push him to askance, the folds of rest welcoming.

He knew not, not truly.

He wondered on, however.

The moon shines bright through diaphanous curtains, threading through svelte fingers and the cheap silk of his sleepwear. Playing with shadows and the berth of consciousness tugging at him.

Nights like these, when the moon was full and the world beyond quiet, sleep came not so easily. Flashes of sea and storm lay sleepless in the open crevice of mind and memory, intermingling with actuality til' all that was left of him is a façade, the once-surety of he who was here, the lone occupant of apartment 214.

Of course, the stories weren't quite on point. None, he thinks, could ever be. What little he could find, unbiased and as complete as he knows of, are stapled here, along the spines of old books and the backs of journal entries and articles.

 _The Apartments._

Numbers themselves didn't matter, only stated room and floor and none else, as is, they were enough.

The rooms however, _they_ were identity. He'd been told thus, when first he'd come to in this gratuitous prison. He was 214, stripped of name and title, of memory.

The public had called the project insanity, when first suggested, incorporated. He, trapped here, might have even been inclined to agree. The world beyond, unreachable. It was… _cruel_.

He and his boundless curiosity, kept bound by lock and key in this gilded cage; lost of mind, lost of memory.

 _Unthinkable_.

Yet Natalie had been kind to him that first visit his first day here. Had held his hand, smiled red-lipped and unflinchingly sardonic.

 _"It's for the best,"_

He'd never been told his purpose here. Never been told if he'd dragged himself here willingly like some, or if he'd been forced, kicking and screaming like most others.

He never asked.

And he didn't plan to, not now, at least. The memories (he was sure they were, but where they his own?) came flashing on the regular now. The crash of waves, the scent of salt on sea. Rocks below the crest of a cliff, a towering drop.

 _Falling. Falling._

 _The crack and sizzle of lightning._

 _"That's normal,"_

Steven liked to visit people here, said it helped lift their spirits, and so helped lift his own. Mostly, the visits were infrequent, only when he had the time.

They weren't for him, though. Steven, though it'd never seemed like he was the type for favorites, rather seemed to like having him around. It was disconcerting.

Nice _._

 _"What do you think it means?"_

It was cold this night, or so Steven had said, bundled in the thick of blankets as he'd shuffled into his room.

He didn't feel it, not quite.

 _"You're healing."_

Lightning and rain, the drizzle like the clacking of boots on gravel. The slow pull of a marching band.

 _Shutter._

He looks down, across from him a window stays open, catching wind and rain. The building is far, but his eyesight isn't poor, he sees as clearly as if he were just outside the window itself.

 _Click. Shutter._

A figure in black, tracing along the back of a camera lens. Fingers gloved and face hooded.

 _Snap. Click. Shutter. Snap._

He watches, forehead rested against the glass of the open windows. The figure must notice him by now, but his hands keep moving, watching. Even from here, separated by the bowels of early morning traffic and yards of heavy rain, he can hear it. Almost clearly.

 _Snap. Snap. Snap._

 _"Smile."_


	3. Trapped

_Pale._

 _Had he always been so pale?_

 _Memory escapes him; much as time, much as reason. Here, sat within the confines of this gilded cage, there is no linearity, no singular construct to help him encapsulate all that was and is and will be._

 _Reality blurs around its ragged edge._

 _It has been long since he has laid eyes upon the great constellations of Asgard, longer still since he'd last laid eyes upon its suns. Indeed, like an undying itch, it claws at him. Desperate and eager for the warmth of Asgardian day, loathe as he was to admit so. (And yet, despite his many requisitions, the subtle manipulations he knows mother and brother to be most impressionable of, his ruling remained steadfast)._

 _Walls that dampened seidr, a canvas of magic that acted to bar him from his well-deserved freedom. No light, no fresh air. Trapped and locked beneath the very flooring of the_ great _palace of the realm eternal._

 _Indeed, it must be, and so he agrees, the All-father was embarrassed. And he had, unwitting and naïve, readily bent his neck to his will._

Pitiful.

 _Ah, but fool he had always been._

 _The light above flickers, gold and green then startling red. The use of seidr had been miniscule at best, but it served him well enough._

"Brother, it's been quite a while…"

* * *

Natalie goes by schedule like clockwork. Rarely, if ever, has she flounced without reason.

He finds today that expectation, however, is never to be so solidly believed and held to.

"I'm sorry,"

She says, words soft. Almost sincere.

"Something's come up, I can't stay with you like I normally would."

He smiles it away, the disappointment. Latching on instead to the rush of breath, short and rasping beneath the thinness of a voice he'd long keyed into. There, the pale mask she wears hangs on, only just. Stapled together by product and worry and pressing determination.

"Ah, then I should not keep you,"

He murmurs, fingers curled around the doorknob, ready to let her out the moment she steps away.

She _doesn't_. Not immediately.

"Here, something to keep you preoccupied,"

In her hands, there lays a bundle clothed in white silk, smelling of jasmines. He takes it from her delicately, brushing past the intricacy of the gold inlay, and the feather softness of the cloth for the gift beneath.

"A tome?"

"Older than I am, but somehow better preserved."

She smiles wryly, brushing back the thick of blood red hair as she watches on.

"Go ahead, open it up."

There's this look in her eyes. Wary, almost. As if she were expecting something of him. He sighs some, giving into the gag and pulling back the thick leather of the cover.

"…old Norse?"

He says suddenly, arching a brow in the face of the expectation still there.

"Thought you liked old stuff?"

And indeed, to some extent it was true. There was, however, niggling forth from some blocked off corner of mind and memory, a rage so thick he almost chokes on it. And he finds himself fearful, suddenly, of the words inscribed in a language he should otherwise not understand.

"…thank you,"

He manages to say, wiry black hair covering the draw of his brows as he glances over the first few pages of the tome.

 _The before. The Norns. Yggdrasil._

 _Mind and Soul, Space and Power, Time and Reality._

"I'll be back later, alright? How does lunch sound?"

Her voice sounds almost muffled, as if from beneath the surface of water. Burbling, he thinks. Still so thin.

"Ah, that would be fine, Natalie."

He feigns interest then, fingers curled around leather binding and silken cloth both, the smell of jasmine cloying in its sweetness as he turns to look at her. She's smiling still, hand on the door, one foot already half in the hallway.

"I'll see you in a couple hours,"

Natalie says, waving a hand before leaving, even shutting the door after herself.

He then stands there, stays there, eyeing the door. The scent of jasmine wafts thinly through the air, and he grips the silken cloth tighter, tome forgotten in its short fall to the floor.

"Perhaps,"

He whispers then, nosing along the edge of the cloth.

Familiar, so _familiar_.

The rage quells.

* * *

For all his posturing, the world he comes to is not a place he settles quickly into. The people, lonesome as he is, titter still on the knives edge between ghostly and bothersome. At times raucous and sun-bright, yet also at times so quiet, he hears no further than the thinness of cheap plywood separating him from hallway, room and stairwell.

The visitors he has, the two of them, are the lone pillars in the dark of this new beginning. Steven, for how cocksure he seems to be, tramples through the social construct that would normally cue him away from his personage. And Natalie, for all her smarts, was an almost-detached pragmatic that snaked through each visit with sugar coated words and nonsensical threats bar one physical manifestation and several injuries he knew her to wish upon him.

 _How observant._

He within the mirror smiles at him, the neurotic chatter of his teeth deceivingly feeble.

 _How you must want me, the answers to all the questions that circle your mind…._

Sometimes, when left alone at least, he imagines what he was like before. The program had been explained to him, of course. Natalie, deceitful as half her words tended to be, didn't make a habit of keeping him fully in the dark.

He'd been sent here by someone, he knew for sure. Not of who, or when, but for now, this was enough.

The apartments themselves were merely a commercial betting match on who could catch the most government funded revenue, and just a bit of a mad therapists go at long-term healing.

"You're a patient here,"

He'd been told, counting down the numbers of the spines of every collected encyclopedia shoved into the small of the apartment's bookshelf. Natalie had been there, and so had Steven. They had been trying to convince him to reel back doubt and word, let play this new reality as he settled into waking in this strange place.

"Patient?"

Steven had explained, then. The neighbors, all other patients. Himself, one of 300 working through the new program.

They two were supervisors, here to see progress.

"Do I have a name?"

He remembers asking awhile after, trailing after dancing green eyes, the sarcastic tilt of red painted lips as she'd beat him in chess yet again.

"That's for you to find out,"

Natalie had whispered, leaning forward, hands clasped and elbows digging into the skin of her thighs. She'd been so heavily amused by him.

"You don't care about my wellbeing do you? Not really."  
She'd shaken her head, then. Smiled to her ears and called it a day.

He never asked after his name again.

* * *

Chandler marries Monica after all, and a heavy weight settles upon him. It was hard, watching the fool give his life away.

He doesn't think to question why.

Outside, rain batters heavily against the glass of his windows, and the brick of the walls beside it. Burning fuel and the chill of autumn fog up what little visibility he has of the world outside, and he finds himself forced to sit through reruns of F.R.I.E.N.D.S episodes he'd seen just the day before.

Normally he would be pissed. Normally, he'd switch off the television and wait out the afternoon with tea and reading.

He couldn't do that now, though.

Natalie had not shown up after all. He'd waited, chessboard set and the daily papers Sudoku completed, long past late morning and well into the afternoon. The door had not budged. The apartments stayed quiet.

It irked him, truly. And he found that, although he tried, he just could not concentrate on what little entertainment there'd been available to keep his mind off the issue at hand.

Steven had not visited either, even though he'd promised honey and fresh baked croissants just the day before.

He hears a crackle, like bark on stone amplified by reverberating walls. The light overhead flickers, just as outside flashes.

The sound of traffic is deafening. Screeching tires and blazing horns, below, people screaming and crying for whatever reason.

He watches on, phlegmatic in the face of flickering red and orange, the smoke wafting through the narrow bracket beneath the windowpane.

Behind him, the television shuts off on itself, electricity fried by whatever it was outside that'd caused the explosion.

 _"_ _—Look! Look who it is!_

 _"Oh my God!"_

 _"They're here!"_

The screams remain piercing, even through the reverberating hum of impending disaster. But it is the words, above all else, that his ears find and latch onto. Sharp. Awed. Happy, almost.

He knows of _them_ of course. Every person in existence has heard of them.

The heroes of earth. Protectors on New York and, eventually, the world.

The Avengers.

Curiosity pulls then, a short tug in the midst of the internal crisis grabbing hold of him.

He finds his breath coming out short, his heart thundering against his chest. His body numbs itself to the heat slowly drifting in, somehow little affected in the face of thick smoke curling through the edges of his apartment windows. He almost looks. Almost makes it to the little crack in his window not already blackened by the heat.

But then there's a banging on his apartment door, a scream he recognizes to be Steven's.

"Are you okay in there?"

He hears the distant wail of sirens, the screams slowly tapering off. He'd guess the fight was over, if fight it was. Brawls with the Avengers never lasted so long.

"I'm fine."


	4. Steven

_The air is rank with death and the festering of disease. Cloyingly, like a pall pulled slowly over the prisons gravitas and hitched on with a nail. No soul makes move. In the damp of their jailhouses, under the dullness of flickering oil-lamps, they lay silent. Forgotten._

* * *

"Are you well?"

The gauze is thin and not quite enough to cover up all his injuries. Steven's head and chest, as they are of import, take most of what little stock he'd had. A small shake of his head, and even then the fool winces. He sniffs at this, holding his bruised cleft between thumb and pointer lest he agitate the gash more.

"It'll heal quickly enough."

Steven murmurs, a solemn thing. He makes to shrug (and his brows pinch with the strain) before settling, not bothering to speak again.

He sighs.

"You give me a headache, Steven, truly. What were you thinking?"

Steven stiffens visibly, paler, somehow, than neither shock not injury could claim.

"I had to help,"

Steven pauses before he could fully explain himself, words already croaking in the heat of the air. With another sigh, he hands over a bottled water, the very one he'd been nursing before the fires had started. It was warm now, the ice having melted. He hoped Steven wouldn't mind.

Steven settles himself into the backrest of the couch, staring blankly at the television as sirens whirl along the roads below, even though it's been over an hour since the fires had stopped. The blonde looked patchy, paper-white (even under all the soot). Most importantly, he looked restless. Fingers ticking, itching after the scuffs in his jeans, the burns in his jacket and even the throw pillows he had bunched to the side of the couch.

"So, are you up to sulking away the night or should I keep pestering after my answers?"

And it wasn't exactly that he was amicable, long days and nights spent hounding after wordplay and argument had made it rather clear to himself and what little company he'd kept close by. No, it was something more peculiar. Something a little more pitiful, really.

He understood.

"You can take the couch here,"

He says later on, when another hour has passed them by and the below has silenced itself near completely. Moonlight creeps through the lone opened window, singed curtains billowing with every new rush of the wind. Though dark, he was fairly certain it was well past midnight, and he more than anyone knew how grouchy Steven tended to ' _not be'_ when he stayed up too late.

"The blankets are where I normally leave them, you know where that is, yes?"  
Steven nods, mouth only slightly pursed at the pain. He sighs again, brushing back gangly black hair and offering the man a smile, small as it was.

"Call me if anything,"

Then he's out of the living room, the scant remnants of his medical supplies gripped tight in long fingers as he dawdles over to the kitchenette, pocketing them in the cabinet beneath the sink. It's while he's pouring a glass of water (for later, he never quite sleeps through the night) that Steven walks over, arms folded around himself and looking so strangely small.

"Before you go,"

Steven whispers, voice not quite as small. All sun-bright smile and earnest sincerity.

"I just wanted to thank you. I was in a bad way and you took care of that, even though it was hell out there,"

He gestures at the window innocently peaking over the kitchens tiled countertop. Steven seems to swallow then, rubbing at his eyes with his one good hand as he smothers down a wet chuckle.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more,"

The man says, almost too quietly to hear. But _he_ hears it still, picks up on it as if Steven had been screaming instead, loud and obnoxiously earnest as he usually was.

 _Salt on his tongue, salt on the wind. Wet hair, wet eyes. Blue._

A big heart, this one. So big and so familiar.

He grips around his arm, hopefully more assuring in looks than what little he had in way of words. He'd found in his short time here that silence and solemnity, at least for Steven, was to be more believed than ramblings and assurances.

"I will see you on the morrow, Steven"

He walks away slowly, tenser than he'd been when he'd left the first time.

He doesn't think to question why. Questions lead to stress and he was… tired. A bone deep tiredness he'd never noticed creeping up on him.

Yet, when his heads meets his pillow, he finds himself blisteringly awake and the realization comes with a spike of— of something. Wretched and cavernous, a liquid fire left austere within the thick of his veins.

This night, sleep does not come easy.

* * *

He wakes to the sizzle of a pan and a clattering in his kitchenette. From the smell of it, its Steven's doing. He sits with a snap.

Somehow, the groggy inhumanity of morning fatigue eludes him, and he finds himself clambering against the wall only once while yawning, house slippers clicking harshly against the cheap tiles of the floorboards.

"Morning princess!"  
It's Natalie. Lounging on his dining table, legs propped against the one expensive item in the apartment (it was custom-made mahogany!) she looked suitably smug. In long strides, eyes narrowed (and he liked to think, quite deadly) he pushes her feet off, glad, at least, that she was wearing her designated house slippers and not the boots she trounced around in occasionally.

"Is this an apology for yesterday?"

True to form for the hour, she flips him he bird, reburying herself in the mornings paper.

"Morning bud!"

Steven is enthusiastic, somewhat. Bubbling with an energy he and Natalie could barely scrape up at the hour. He must have been up long.

"You are well?"

He asks, and Steven hums in answer. It's when he's walking in, toast, sunny side eggs and bacon (all American, he'd been told by Natalie offhandedly) that he properly gets an answer. Steven still looked battered up, stiff around some places and purple in more, but he looked better than he did the night before. Already, he's bounding around the apartment, smiling and warm and ever a bright light— though thoroughly unneeded. The gauze around his head is gone, and save a singular line tracing from cheek to temple, the wound was near completely gone too. From the looks of his chest—what little peaked over his shirt and apron— the gauze had been replaced with a compression bandage (probably Natalie's work). Huh.

"You heal fast, Steven."

He blinked, watching as the man placed the stacked plates onto the small table.

Beside him, Natalie finally put away the newspaper.

"Don't look so surprised. He heals the same as the rest of us,"

And he considered this, really, he did. Though it was definitely true (Natalie had once walked in with a bruise and he'd watched it clear before his eyes. As for himself, a slip of a knife while cutting apples had only pained him an hour,) he couldn't help but wonder. He'd always thought he was different. Weird in a way only the people in the Apartments were. (And he'd watched enough soaps to know that wounds healed not so fast for the majority of the human race).

He lets it go at the flicker of Natalie's eyes. That quirk of her brow, always of non-demandingly intimidating.

He can figure it out on his own. Later.

"So, wanna tell me why I had to patch you up big boy?"

Surprisingly, it was Natalie who spoke. Lips pinched in that way he knew _spelt_ annoyance.

"Uh,"

At least Steven looked properly flustered. Maybe even the taddest bit ashamed.

"I was pushing out this guy and like, a beam fell on me. It was fine, I mean, the kid was safe—"

He drawls off, voice quieting under the combined power of his and Natalie's ire.

"Where were you even? If a beam had fallen on you, how'd you even make it up here with the injuries? I had to catch you when I opened the door, you know"

And maybe he was a bit harsh with the way he'd said it, but he was worried and he'd used near the entirety of his medicine box just on keeping the blonde upright. He deserved everything he got.

Steven, for all he was worth, took the scolding graciously enough. Packing half of their combined breakfast onto his plate as he did so.

A sigh. Not from him, but from Natalie.

"You aggravated your injuries. You know what the boss will say, he's _highly_ fond of you"

It wasn't quite sarcasm, but it was enough for him to raise a brow. Natalie's only response was a shrug, as if to say _'what?'_

"Look, I wasn't even that far from the squad. The guys on the lower floor needed all the help after the lightning fried through half the concrete. I'm surprised the building's even standing."

He blinked, surprised by the news. Natalie remained unsurprised by this (and he'd maybe question that later), but for now….

"You mean… the Apartments?"

Steven almost jumped with how hard he'd startled. Mouth half full and surprised as if he'd forgotten _he_ was there.

"Uh,"

He swallowed harshly, grabbing for his coffee before he ended up choking on his own food.

"Y-Yeah,"

He swallowed again, gasping a thankful breath. Delicately— more to give himself time than anything— he cut into his meal, waiting out Stevens reply as he flubbed through some complicated spasm-like gesture language with Natalie.

"Uhm,"

A stretch. From the pained whine, he'd guess Natalie had had enough and silenced him. Oh well.

"We were helping the Avengers round up those guys on the lower floors, make sure they were safe for transfer and all that."

A raised brow. Through pinched lips and the usual annoyance she liked to flaunt around (especially when the undermining left him red to the point of peeling) she actually looked amused by his skepticism.

"So, is that why you're here, other than the apology? I'm being moved?"

A pause. This question, he'd hazard a guess and say she found it less amusing.

"No."

"No?"

Even Steven looked surprised. Close as he liked to think he was to the glorified babysitters, it looked like even _this_ conversation had limits.

A long, _long_ sigh. Enjoy as he might her occasional moodiness, this time she genuinely seemed tired.

"Look, I'll explain it properly when the time comes,"

She turns to _him,_ lips pursed white and red painted nails tapping along the edge of her plate. She looked focused for a while, as if mulling over her words. He, for a smidgen of time, actually thought she'd consider actually telling him more than her usual half-truths.

Alas, no such luck.

"Finish your breakfast quickly if you want Steven here to wash up for you. We'll be leaving within the hour,"

Then she's picking her paper from where she'd put it away, the food she's stacked in her plate earlier somehow already gone. Eaten (because Natalie never shares and actually quite likes Steven's food, though she'd never tell him so).

It was unbecoming of him, he knew, but the groan was nearly as long as it was _longsuffering_.

Ever the polite one, it's only after he's swallowed his food that Steven begins to laugh.

* * *

 _"From what I know, the Allfather's stripped him of his magic."_

 _He awakens to a rush of hushed voices, soft and low and echoing in their treachery across the barrier of magic and seidr dampening walls. He wonders minutely if they were truly foolish to believe the Allfather would not set charms to remedy the otherwise privacy of their entrapment, or if they were truly not privy to the unspoken rules of Asgardian prison decorum._

 _Here, there was no such thing as privacy._

 _"So what, slip through the barrier, slit his throat? It cannot be so easy"_

 _A woman's' voice, tinkling and loud in the silence of the prison cells. He doesn't quite open his eyes, laying still in his cot instead as the fools continue on, laughing all the while._

 _"Ah, but you forget. We have the keys,"_

 _He hears the telltale jingle then, hidden beneath the racket of stiff leathers and the drag of clunking metal armor. He almost laughs at the irony then. Almost._

 _"And he is a Prince."_

 _A pause. The air stills, and he feels it then, a shift in the air just outside his cell. What little magicks he'd woven slithering beneath the surface of dampening walls and gathering strength enough to identify and oh— he'd never known he was hated so desperately._

 _"No Prince of mine."_

 _The man seethes, an old Einherjar he remembers from childhood. The croaky old fool._

 _"Always knew you talked to much,"_

 _He turns then, staring back at the supposed guards with wicked amusement._

 _"Mother will not be pleased."_

 _The man, the old food (he remembers not the name) glowers at him. Foaming at the mouth, teeth seeking past the mouthpiece of his helmet in a silent snarl._

 _"It's your word against ours, trickster."_

 _He smiles a wane little smile. Ever the diplomat._

 _"I do hope you enjoy court, Einherjar. It is as a Lions' Den these days."_

 _The old fool is gone soon enough, his woman friend with him. And though the smugness of this latest victory rests pliantly in his breast, a deeper, festering wound bounds slowly to the surface._

* * *

The electricity had been restored long hours before sundown, and yet he could not find it within himself to care. The rooms are dark, save the slightness of moonlight curling in through the crack in the window.

He'd cleaned much of the soot as he could, and indeed, the windows were clear enough, but from the looks of the grating he'd probably have to have his little window replaced before he could have any semblance of proper sleep.

He sighs, head on the glass, looking out onto the streets below. His apartment was high enough that, from so far, the people looked as ants do, swatting over crack-like brick sidewalks in some attempt at a fast progression home.

It wasn't late into the night, far from it, but it was late enough that supper called and people ran from work and school, chasing after hunger more than safety. The atmosphere of the city, he'd guess, didn't help with matters.

Traffic, for the first time in two nights, is back to normal. The usual honks and screeching tires lulling him into a sense of security he had not thought he'd ever feel here.

It is perhaps the calmness that gives it away, then. The tranquility of the night that allows him to see it.

A flickering light, blindingly bright white from buildings away. Of course, one could ridicule him, say, for all the days he'd spent nestling between the edge of sleep and wakefulness that he didn't quite know what he was seeing.

Only he'd seen this before, in just the building opposite. And try as he might, he simply couldn't shake the feeling that this is just as it had been then.

Closing his eyes, fingers shaking from where he has them along the windows, he slowly stands and pulls himself away.

It wasn't quite so late but it was late enough.

Even if with difficulty, he was going to bed.


	5. Silently

He would assume that she was bored of him. It was the only explanation.

The apartment is cool from where he stands, dark in ways he'd never quite appreciated before. Natalie had been here just moments ago, trouncing from a swooping victory with arms raised and excuses spewed carelessly in turn.

"I'm busy"

She'd said this time around, placing his replacement books on the top of his lone bookshelf before headed off with last weeks' collection tucked into her carrier bag. There was none of her usual amusement, nor even her supposed-to-be _ever presen_ t curiosity. And though he liked to think her interactions with him were as usual, well, he'd been wrong in his own assumptions often enough the last several weeks, he wouldn't put it past himself to be in the wrong.

"You will be here next week?"

He'd found himself asking just as she'd reached the door. She did not turn.

"We'll see."

It had been like this for three weeks now, ever since the incident with the fire. Natalie would either come in later than schedule dictated, or not at all. It worried him, truly, yet he still found himself unable to ask after her reassurances.

With a sigh, he scoops up the remainder of the chess pieces—antique ivory, if memory served him well enough— and tucks them safely into the wooden drawer beneath the golden filigree of the board. He's careful with the pieces, some part within himself mindful of the appearance, and well, the _need_ he has of them. With the way things were starting to turn out with Natalie, he'd rather the memories he had with her _not_ be soured by his own recklessness.

He almost misses it, he later muses, tucked into the furthest corner of his bedroom. The quietness of before, the limbo of his old schedule. Now, though there was nothing inadvertently wrong with his situation, he found himself suffering for his wishes of change.

The unfamiliarity of the now were as knives poised for the throwing by the blind. Each new revelation had him dreading… _something_. A drastic shift perhaps from what he knew now to something _other_. Something that could take from him what little of his sanity he had left, and regardless of what he remembered, quash with it his hopes of ever leaving here.

He feels it then, the moment it's sunk its claws into him. Panic, desperate and cloying. Leeching his energy with what he'd sorted to be _nothing at all_. Little thoughts, little worries. Words that circled his head; had been circling his head from the very first night he'd awoken here. He'd thought he'd dealt with it then, had been continuously dealing with it for the entirety of his stay within these apartment walls….

Breath comes to him in quick gasps, unable to stay put in lungs that feel like they've been drenched in water. He folds his arms in an attempt to curl in on himself, and he can feel the heat then. His skin clammy to touch, heated though he feels none of it. Only the cold. Cold like the outside was supposed to be, as if he'd been stripped and thrown into the streets for nature to feast on.

He gasps, images flashing before his eyes.

 _Salt on the air, the wind billowing around him as waves crashed against the hull of the wooden ship._

 _Screams._

 _Salted air barely breathable, caught on flames so thick as to completely obscure his vision._

 _Frozen._

 _Frozen bodies. Bluer than the skies and bluer than water. Ice cracks beneath them, a crisscrossing split that arched through the flooring like the strike of lightning._

 _"Brother!"_

He does not wake. His eyes are already opened, and consciousness had never left him.

He breathes heavily, deeply in and slowly out. Works past the shuddering gasps threatening their way from squeezing lungs.

He can almost taste it, now. The smoke, the smell of burning carcasses. The wind had been strong, the waves had been stronger, and through the plum of fire, the burning of the wreckage, he distinctly remembers the fall.

"Brother…"

There had been a scream, deep and piercing. It was the last he'd heard before he'd been engulfed by the water.

He looks up then, slow and uneasy. There across the room was his bed, tucked into the wall just by the room door. The tome sat almost mockingly, the first several pages open and read through. Atop it, the same silken cloth Natalie had used as a wrapper.

He swallows lightly, slowly crawling over to the bed.

He felt… weak. As if all his energy had been entirely sucked out of him. The dark of the room helped matters, at least. Drew his mind away from the deep red of the flames and the sloshing blue of sea and ice and sky, the congealing travesty of his— his what?

He reaches the bed, places thin fingers on the silken softness of the cloth and draws it close. He knew not of the perfumes used on the cloth, if the silk had been soaked or sprayed. But in the three weeks he'd kept it, it had not lost its smell.

Sweet. The deep sweetness of Jasmine.

It calms him, not immediately, but the light trace of the smell, so familiar and _known_ to him, it helps him.

So when the shudders stop… when the shudders stop and his hands stop shaking. When his breath has leveled and his mind has cleared off the haze of that once-memory, he allows himself to relax into the comfort of the silk.

He knew not from whence it came. Knew not if what he thought of it was simply a perpetuation of what he wished it to be, or if it really was as he hoped. For the moment, it did not matter.

Resting against the edge of the bed-frame, he can only sigh in relief when the calm has fully washed him over. He can think on the images he'd seen later on, when his mind wasn't so tired and he could think clearly for himself.

For now… he'd enjoy this. The silence.

* * *

 _"You speak so little, brother,"_

 _Tone light, almost teasing. Within himself, the walls that barred himself from the world beyond his nature, he would know of what this meant. The worry laced within, the sadness wreathed by his amusement. Indeed, it was a thin mask, something he should have_ _— would have picked so easily up if it had been any other time._

 _But it_ wasn't _._

 _He barely spares his brother a glance, watching instead with dulled eyes the wisps of seidr crawling through the changing ebb of the dampening walls. It was calming, almost, the way he felt for himself a sick satisfaction, strong enough to be almost glee._

 _A touch, and he'd burn through the flesh of his fingers. A push of his own seidr, and he'd burn through the length of his arm and the each connecting circuit of seidr within himself._

 _As ever, Odin is so very protective of those he favored._

 _"Will you not answer me?"_

 _Rougher now, his voice. Rough, like the brush of gravel beneath his boots, sullied only by the thickness of his tone that could only precede the coming of tears._

 _A sigh, his. Long, longer perhaps than what he'd intended. It pierces through the quiet like a burning sword, and he finds himself reeling into the cold of his cell walls in turn._

 _"…I wish to know of my Mother,"_

 _His brother stands silently beyond his cell, back straight yet looking so strangely small. His blue eyes, he thinks, seem so very sad._

 _"Oh, Loki."_

* * *

He wakes with little fanfare.

One moment he is as he remembered himself being, and the next his eyes are opened, and it is not to a closed cell but to the ever plain walls of his room in the Apartment. He is not disoriented by the change, indeed he is not surprised at all.

He blinks back from his vision the blurry visages of his once-memories, and when he next opens his eyes, he remembers not at all.

Dreams slip from him as the finest of sands, and he finds himself missing them not at all. Yet this rest, as all others he'd had in the months preceding, has left him wearier than when last he'd been awake. And this should frighten him, he remembers mentioning thus to Steven before, the horror on his face should have been enough…and yet… yet he is only tired. Bone-weary in ways his appearance should suggest him unable to.

For a moment he mingles on this, contemplates the merits of rest if rest is not what was offered to him in his unconsciousness. Of course, like every other being in existence, he is only more curious of his ailment the more the days flitter him by. The paleness of his skin, the recent frequency of his waking-terrors and sleepless nights had left him barren of the youth he'd seen of himself within the mirror when first he'd woken. Yet, the more he struggled through inspissating memories, the less he could claim as answer.

Blue and salt on air, the rush of waves. Those, he knew most definitely. Ever on the forefront of his every remembered memory.

All else slipped his mind, like the pancakes on Steven's buttered pans when he deigned to make _him_ breakfast.

It was, and he'd declared often enough, an impossibility. He could not hope to unravel his past, not with the way he could barely remember anything other than the times spent here within the pasty walls of his Apartment room.

And _yet_ ….

He moves out of his bedroom, arms folded around himself in a hunch that spoke only of his increasing fatigue. With wild eyes he scanned over the littleness of his living room, the pillows quashed against the side of his ratty three-bodied couch, and the small flat nestled against the back of a long wall. The books in his cabinet had been reshuffled, and his prized mahogany table had been cleaned off, a small package set in the middle, a note attached. From far, despite the darkness, he could make out the rough lines of Steven's script, written most definitely with his preferred charcoal pencils ("instead of ballpoint pens like a normal person," Natalie would sometimes joke, however unbecoming it was of her. Steven often said it was a result of association with their regularly mentioned 'Tony' character).

He chuckled, barely more than a gasp in the dryness of the night air. It does not bother him as it should, care for that matter had eluded him the moment he'd realized he'd have to draw his curtains for anything fresh. He was tired as is, and though he was not hungry, neither was he ungrateful.

"Thank you,"

He whispered silently, eyeing the paper cup beside the package with amusement. Apparently, Steven was of the tangent that he wasn't up to much tonight.

(Minutely he wondered when it was exactly that Steven had gotten to know him so well.)

The kitchenette is empty of life, as starkly dark as the rest of him apartment. When he places a hand on the package, it's cold to touch, and he can only surmise that Steven had been here long hours before, perhaps just a little after he himself had fallen off from consciousness.

He cares little.

Opening the packet (Mediterranean from the restaurant seven blocks out), he can only smile. Though he wasn't particularly fond of the food, it was the thought within the action that counted. And though these days it seemed as if Natalie was very much prepared to pull away, Steven…wasn't.

And he liked that. Liked being liked. Cared for.

It should've been nothing more than a little moment for him. But as he dug in, within his heart of hearts, he could only feel his appreciation bloom further.

 _And with the whispers of his anxiety settled, unremembered memories filter through the cracks between his split realities. Slowly, through the haze of his sudden hunger, a word slots itself into the known-realms of mind, and he smiles in knowing what he had previously not known before._


	6. Interlude

Mother's garden was an alcove in the heart of all Asgard.

It was not large, far from it. It was... Little. Much like _he_ was little. A coin in a well that was the greatness of the lands of Asgard.

A sigh.

He walks to where he knows the Swans swim, the white of their feathers a stark contrast to the pinks, blues and yellows of the garden flowers. They are silent creatures, much like he is, but much more majestic, he should think.

Beyond golden gates, a commotion arises. Einherjar, at least, the three of them assigned to keep watch of him, stand at the ready as a brawl carries its way from Palace to walkway and then to the field of green just beyond mother's beloved flowerbeds.

Yet, when spears are drawn upon the peace-takers, it turns out to be only Sif. Sif and Fandral, actually, their clothes askew and armed with their wooden training swords. They were easy enough to read, far as they were from mother's pond. Smiling, the both of them. Clearly amused.

The Einherjar beside Sif looks her over, and after, ushers her out.

"The Prince disallows guests this evening,"

He says, and Fandral is already up and ready to go while as Sif stands her ground.

"Thor is here?"

She asks, but it is the wrong thing to ask.

Beside him, the Swans croon, feathers fluttering, as if ready to take off. It takes his attention away from the harshness of her frown when the Einherjar tells her otherwise.

"Oh,"

Is what she says. She does not ask after him. Clearly, she deems it not worth her time.

"We will be off,"

Fandral falls after her, sword tucked into the leathers of his holster, looking back every so often. He does not let the boy see him. Quick as the lightning his brother wields, he ducks into the underbrush, the cool of the berries oddly warm against his skin. Where the commotion had previously been, the Einherjar retakes his post solemnly, shoulders back and spear tucked into his side.

Mother had always been particular about loyalty. With all as it had been the days previous, he finds himself unable to be surprised by the action.

Mother always chooses well.

"Einherjar,"

He calls out shortly thereafter, cleaned of any dirt with a quick brush of seidr. (Mother had always praised him thus, always said he was so brilliant. Under the cool warmth of waning summer sun, the Einherjar remains aloof).

"My prince"

The man answers, hand over chest, eyes on the rocks before delicate feet. The boy smiles.

"What of the time, Einherjar?"

He does not bother knowing the names of his guards. They come and go with every new season, and names led to attachment he could not afford. Not here, under the shifting politics of Asgard.

"Just past noon, my prince"

He says, and leaves it at that. He speaks little, this one. Unlike the man previous, who'd been so opinionated in the face of his child-warden. ("You know little of the word, prince". Mother had sent him away the day after, when he had told her of what had transpired. She had not questioned him then).

He swallows whole, his chest constricting around air that would not hold. He struggles to breathe properly, but says not a word of it. The panic should pass.

"What of my Mother?"

He asks. The guard does not answer him this, not immediately.

"...I have seen her,"

He tells him finally, fingers white around his spear. To speak ill of the family was to seek punishment, the taste of metal in single combat, lashes across his back with scars to remain. To speak ill to the prince, however, was to court death, dance with her as one would a lover. The Allmother did not take lightly to offense against her youngest son, at least, that which is known. Not of late.

"She was in the Palace nearest to the barracks. She speaks with Prince Thor and the All-Father"

Beyond the Einherjar before him, he sees those guarding the gates. Faces flat behind metal helmets, shoulders stiff beneath their armor. Yet he had always known human tells.

They were listening.

"Did not she promise lunch? Send a courier,"

It was a ridiculous demand, perhaps. But her presence of late left him wanting, and he was so very unstable as is.

Above him the Swans circle, l three of them that had been in the pond. Their arrangement is no dance he's ever been privy to, and yet he watches quietly, unable to say more on the off-chance he distracts them.

He has been so fond of quiet lately. So fond of that which would wrest him of a mind that seems only to struggle against doubts and pain and the newness of the eyes given to him.

"Yes, My Prince"

The Einherjar does not stay. He does not know what to feel of that.

A squawk, the Swans land and nestle together near the banks of the small pond. There, just by the rocks swatting the smallness of the pond, trickles of water that drifted into stream which drifted into the many rivers that would carry it to Marmora. But it was not the water he saw, nor the fish that swam freely within.

It was magic, gold and pulsing, the water wreathed so completely by it.

And he recognized this Seidr. He recognized it as much as he did his own face in the mirror, the hands that have raised him since birth.

His mother's garden was an alcove, just as small as he. Just as peculiar...

"The Allmother will see to you momentarily,"

There is no cheer to his voice, no tell as to his emotion. But he is a warrior as much as Sif is a warrior, and all warriors have their tells.

It seems his mother has forgone most of what was promised.

It must be serious then.

"Loki?"

She would call out later on, silent save the swish of her court skirts against the shrubberies. She would reach out, call to her her pond-swans and song birds, ask after the taste of the seidr still staining the air.

"My son?"

She would ask, and walk still through the thick of bushes flowering blues that had been pinks and red and yellows just earlier. She would not notice.

Beyond the small alcove, the green of the grass and the blue of the streams trickling by, the golden gate stays open, unprotected.


	7. Elude

They called it depression, some fast progressing case of dysthymia. Steve only knew that he was just a little too sad.

There were cushions now, placed over every remotely sharp object in the apartment. They'd had to drug Loki for it, move him around to secure the place, as if he were some child, unassuming enough to hurt himself on the blunt end of a coffee table (and he and Nat had been pressured about it, surveillance showed signs of his getting worse, as if the reports _weren't_ enough).

Steve had been the one to drug him, Nat wouldn't touch the stuff. _Bad memories_ is what she'd told him, and he hadn't asked her anything further.

(Yet he'd ask Tony about it later on, and Tony would tell him it was the stuff they planned to use on Bruce, if he ever got to be too much to handle. Capable of taking down a dozen elephants, he'd say, stop their hearts and keep them that way. He asks Jarvis about it afterward, knowing the AI could only tell him the truth. The Hulk had been only an attempt to replicate the serum, the AI would say, and _that_ was that).

"How is he?"

Loki sleeps in his room still, knocked out cold. The reparations— if one could call it that— had been over an hour now, and the room was empty, save him and Natasha.

"He should wake up soon,"

There's no smile to greet him, and her eyes stay elsewhere, fanning over the room as if the last year and a half had never happened and it was her first time here (and Steve finds that he doesn't quite like that look, but he tucks that particular thought away, pushing it to the corner of mind and memory alongside Bucky and the war and all the heartbreak that had followed. He'd never been one to directly confront his demons. He won't be one for a long time, and he's trying to be okay with that).

"They took all the knives— all the forks too. Thor said the last time they weren't careful and…"

She trails off, as if she hadn't been speaking to begin with. The silence rings like bombs on an open field, and he can only absorb it, afraid it'd break. It's always the fear with him, these days.

"I should go,"

She whispers, and maybe if he were any other person, he wouldn't have heard her at all.

He looks up then, watches as she gathers her coat in one hand and her carry-on in another. Without asking, he knows she'll be gone a couple days, like she's been inclined to do lately.

"Stay safe,"

He says, instead of goodbye.

She doesn't turn like she normally would, the quietness she leaves all the parting he would get. She's angry, he knows. She always seems so angry these days.

He doesn't think much of it, too much thought just leads to stress and stress, he finds, has never been his best companion. Instead, he draws the blinds of The Apartments lone window, darkening the room the way he knows Loki to prefer of late.

He doesn't quite check on Loki, merely opens the door and looks. He's younger when he sleeps. Like a boy, he thinks. Thor had always told them before, Loki was his _little_ brother. Before The Apartments, he'd never truly believed it.

He looks quickly away when Loki turns, and he doesn't have to see to know the god was in the throes of another dream. It's been like this for weeks now, he'd seen it happen enough to know.

He doesn't quite sigh when he closes the door, doesn't allow himself the chance to. It's always a tumble for him. One sigh turns to a thought which turns into worry which turns into regret. But he just doesn't have that luxury anymore, now that they're in the final stages of their mission plan.

He can't help it though, the cold piercing through him when he's finally made it out the door.

The _screaming_. He will never get used to the screaming.

But he carries on, anyway.

It's for the best.

* * *

In a way, Loki reminds Steve of himself as a child.

It wasn't that Steve had been particularly curious, nor that he was as intelligent as Loki showed signs of being. But he was quiet like he used to be, and he was polite, always. He liked art and books and company. He respected Natasha, for all he knew of her manipulations (and it was _obvious_ Loki knew, for a man who remembered nothing, he knew quite a lot, and was almost as observant as the spy herself—maybe even more so. Steve tries not to think of what those revelations would imply…), and he respected Steve, more than any person who didn't know him as _The_ Captain America. For all that he was alone and left to himself most days, he was sane and sometimes kind. It was nice.

It was because of this, however, that Natasha would oftentimes warn him against his sentiment. Loki, for all that they knew him now, had still been— still _is_ their enemy.

Yet it is so easy to forget….

"You've arrived,"

It was one of Loki's better days, earlier on in his occupancy of room 214. He hadn't been talkative that morning, but he never was truly talkative outside of his inquisitions, anyway. Steve hadn't thought much of it.

"I've got some bagels,"

Dusted with sugar, with a bottle of jam. Loki had such a sweet tooth, Steve could only guess that heritage had taken care of the worst of his cavities (Natasha had smiled, he recalls, that last time he'd mentioned it).

"On the counter,"

Loki tells him, walking off through the island-styled kitchenette and towards the opened window. It was something Steve observed of him, since the time Loki had been brought in. He loved the open air, loved to look at the skies, just the general outside.

Of course, the scenery was the same everyday of every week, The Apartments weren't anything magical like in Asgard; they were just a collection of heavily fortified apartments in somewhere-New York. Close to civilization to be sure, but the greatest protected by any earthly means. But Loki didn't care. He didn't care the way kid-Steve had cared, kid-Steve a head and a half shorter than boys two years younger than him, kid-Steve with asthma and an immune system so fragile a walk through the children's' ward in the nearby hospital could probably kill him.

He simply looked out, all day every day, smelt the same air, counted the same cracks in the sidewalk, the same cars in their lanes and stayed content (and he smiled so often, especially when the leaves blew off from the trees as the winds started up. He'd smiled particularly widely at an oncoming storm, a happiness there that Steve hadn't truly seen before the war. It would be disconcerting, if Steve knew nothing about him. But Steve did, and he wished he didn't. He'd prefer the discomfort to the sadness tugging at his heart with every new realization).

"So what's on the itinerary today?"

It was more of a Natasha question, but Steve had been feeling out of it since he'd woken up that morning. He let it slip anyway.

"Nothing much,"

Loki says it like he means it, like it wouldn't matter either way. Steve takes it as his cue to leave.

It has been a short few weeks, and he was stressed as is. Autumn was in full swing outside, shedding leaves like animal hairs, one after the other, leaving them in clumpy piles against the soggy dirt between the cement walkways. If he left quickly, he could maybe squeeze in an hours run before being called back to base by one of the other Avengers. _Maybe_.

Clint _had_ been twitchy lately.

It's as he's turning, farewell on the tip of his tongue, that Loki finally properly acknowledges him.

"Actually,"

Loki turns, and it's perhaps the first time Steve had stared directly into those piercing green eyes.

"Could you stay a while?"

Earnest green eyes, expectant and hesitant.

Loki reminded Steve so much of himself sometimes, and in all those times, it'd always hurt to breathe.

A downturn of his lips.

Loki does not back down, but he expects rejection. He always does, Steve realizes.

"Okay"

He settles quietly into the seat beside Loki, and Loki smiles so boyishly than (and he'd have to ask Thor about it later on, how far back his memories had been stripped. He didn't know the system as much as he was a part of it, he'd never cared too much to learn. But this?)

"Well, I'd been meaning to ask…"

Loki is over a thousand years old, very much older than Steve by a _long shot_. Seeing him now, though, it's so hard to believe.

It's always so hard to believe.

 _Sentiment_ , Natasha had warned.

In another lifetime, perhaps he'd heeded that warning. As it stands now, to this day, he does not regret it.

* * *

"Hello, Steven"

He's there when Loki wakes up.

"Hey there, you got any good shut eye?"

Loki merely blinks, rubs the sleep from his eyes. He looks young still, but his temperament is older. Thor says it's only a matter of time.

"I am not familiar with the term,"

Loki says tersely, walking by him to the cushioned bench beneath the covered window. They'd installed it only today. He doesn't seem to notice any difference.

"Just asking if you slept well,"

Steve smiles at that, the small smile he usually reserves for placating the god. It would work, normally. The god does not look his way.

"Where's Natalie?"

Loki asks instead, sniffling. He'd been warm last Steve checked. He's not supposed to be warm. Steve would have to ask Natasha about it.

"Out, you know how busy she's been lately,"

Loki doesn't respond. Steve doesn't expect him to.

"I left some food on the counter, and a couple books Natalie asked for me to deliver, if that's okay,"

Loki doesn't quite nod, merely rest his head against the covered windows.

"I'll replace them for you?"

A dainty wave of his hand. Steve doesn't quite cringe, but he finds it very hard to not react in any way.

"I had a dream, Steven. I wished Natalie were here, I would not say it twice,"

He sounds wrecked, like he'd been on the wrong end of the Hulk's fury and gotten pummeled for his effort (and the imagery doesn't quite stick like it should, and Steve finds himself unable to conjure up any scenario where Loki's hurt and the villain again. After all that's happened, the secrets shared between them, it's not right).

Steve doesn't make any outward show of worry. In the last month, Loki'd shown to truly despise any supposed form of pity. Though Steve would never mention it aloud, he hated to see Loki so furious at simple, friendly affection, and he hated more the idea behind why that was, the reminder that _that_ part of him was there to begin with.

"What happened?"

Steve asks, tucking away the weekly stipend as Loki seemed to mull over his words. He doesn't look at him, not the way he would have a year ago. Loki, for all his dramatics, grew uncomfortable easily. He'd stop talking if he were distressed, and Steve didn't think the dreams were anything worth bottling up so long.

He'd been told already, at least the more relevant tales of Loki's past. He knew why, more than most would, why Loki was the way he was. Even for New York… even for that, Steve couldn't blame him.

He'd be mad, too. Anyone else certainly would have.

"I have a mother, I think"

It's not how Steve expects him to start off, but he doesn't make any move to stop him.

"I— you know of the sea. I've told you before,"

A nod from Steve, but Loki still isn't looking.

"This was after. I..."

He pauses, his breaths coming in short gasps. Steve is on his way to him when Loki raises a hand, thin fingers impossibly long, leaking a green he hasn't seen since the invasion.

Steve doesn't quite panic, but a part of his heart settles itself with the knowledge.

It was coming soon, sooner than any of them could have predicted.

He'll have to talk to Fury about this… the Aesir if they don't already know.

He's not looking forward to any of those meetings.

"Hey, hey it's okay,"

He tries to reassure him, but he's never been a good liar, and the serum had only helped _so_ much. Loki, sharp as ever, catches on before he's even finished.

He doesn't call him out on it, though. He never does.

"I saw gold in the stream, and the plants in her garden"

He says slowly, as if this were some big revelation. Maybe it was.

"I waited for her,"

Loki says, whispering out the last few words. There's a sadness to his expression that Steve's seen too much of the last several days, ever since the fire. He doesn't question it, never had any way of questioning why. But the hope that this would all turnaround is beginning to wither away.

"She never did come, she never did…"

Steve watches, hands beside him. In his periphery, he sees a flash beyond the dark of the curtain, thick enough to block most lights, but not to catch all. Loki doesn't notice it.

 _And secretly, Steve hopes he never does._

 _"What did you do?"_

Steve had never been much of a liar, but both he had been trained to bait the truth. And Loki— Loki trusts him. Had trusted him since the first morning he'd sat with him, simply listening to him as he spoke of things he couldn't truly remember now.

It hurt, though it wasn't a lie. It _hurt_.

That was, perhaps, the hardest part about this.

"…I never left."

Steve wasn't the smartest of the Avengers, and beyond his skill on the battlefield, wasn't too good of a SHIELD agent either. Considering what he knew though, from the little he's heard from Natalie, and _Thor_ and now Loki himself, he thinks he understands quite enough.

If it didn't hurt so much, Steve thinks that maybe he would be angry.

* * *

"You're late,"

His apartment is dark when he arrives, but he'd know that voice anywhere. He doesn't jump, not like he would have before the war.

 _Everything's so different now…._

"You're in my apartment."

It's not a question, and they both know it. After all this time, it still drains him, talking of those dreams with Loki. Maybe it's because of that that he doesn't kick her out. He's not in the mood for more bad news.

"You look like the dead rolled over,"

He smiles, and it's maybe a little crazed (and Natasha always gives as well as she gets so they both find themselves quickly trapped at an impasse).

"Here,"

The tome hits his small dining table with a loud _thwack_ , sending the scrap paper hastily slid between the pages flying. He tries to read them when he picks them back up, but the notes are written in a language he's never quite seen before, and that, above all, leaves him stumped.

"What is this?"

Steve isn't accusatory in tone, but Natasha's smile is sharp enough to break to any misconception he may have of her feelings towards him right now.

 _Not particularly impressed_.

At least she wasn't pissed.

"He's manipulating us,"

Natasha tells him frankly, and Steven finds that hard to believe.

She must have seen it in his expression. The pull of his lips, maybe. The crease in his brow? He'd been a soldier, not a spy. He didn't know tells the way Natasha did.

"We just finished cushioning his apartment this morning, Nat"

And maybe he's exasperated, but Natasha isn't being particularly outwards with whatever it is she's figured out, and what she has said, isn't something that sits well with Steve.

"I know you don't trust him…"

She scoffs at that. For the first time in a while, he completely ignores that.

"But what you're implying is kinda ridiculous. Have you even seen him lately?"

He's being overprotective, maybe even a little possessive. But Loki… Loki was just a kid. Despite his temperament, the long years he's had stacked against Steve's _very_ meager 95— he'd worked out the calculations himself, from what he knew of the 'Gods' aging.

Loki was just a _kid_.

By every standard, he was just a **_kid_**.

(A kid who damn nearly leveled New York, and if the Asgardian's are to be believed, destroyed an entire realm as well.)

Sentiment, Natasha had warned him about it.

But he's in so deep now….

"Look at these notes. The translations are on the scrap paper, I had Frigga work them for me"

She gives him a long look, a dark glower against the harsh lighting of his kitchen.

And it's a long while afterward, when the skies had darkened beyond visibility, and the city smog had caught up enough of the suburbs to block off any natural light. Natasha stayed standing before him the entirety of the time, much more stubborn than he'd ever been, war or otherwise.

Maybe it's the way her eyes soften, as if she understands. Maybe it's the way he knows she won't back down until he decides to use his strength to get the better of her. Maybe it's the fact that she can clearly think of those as possibilities and still look him in the eye throughout it, like she trusts him.

Maybe it's all of that combined.

Either way, the answer comes almost too-easy afterward.

"Okay."


	8. Tension

He remains awake, long hours after. The light of the moon feint under the blinking yellow of his years-old nightlight. Before him, the open tome, words written in a script he couldn't ever hope to decipher for himself.

Yet the familiarity is no less jarring.

His conversation with Natasha comes slowly back, from whispers in the very back of his head to a gradual onslaught of every truth he still refused to accept.

 _"He remembers,"_

Natasha had said, lips thinned. Grim. He had protested at first, called her for her insanity because he just _couldn't believe_ her.

She'd shown him the tome then.

 _"You recognize his handwriting,"_

It hadn't been a question. Natasha, she'd always seen right through him, she was too good for that.

She was right. There were, of course, the doubts he'd had. Piling high and exceedingly optimistic.

Loki, after all, had always been intelligent.

 _"Steve."_

She didn't force him to accept the words she had to spare for him. Neither did she try to reassure him, the way she normally would on a mission gone wrong. Her stance was firm, resolute. She'd left, head held high and confident he'd change his mind.

He should've expected it, really. Though not heartless, she'd always been cynical with her loyalties, always keeping to her head and her own perception of right and wrong.

He'd never called her out on it before. He understood—u _nderstands_.

He blinks back the wariness brought about by his fatigue, nursing the Asgardian grade coffee-substitute like a lifeline as he read through the notes Queen Frigga had been kind enough to compile.

They were translations, mostly. Tidbits on the tome itself, but more often than not, a look-see into her youngest sons' intellect.

Seidr, the art of Asgardian magic. For all that he had lost his memories, Loki knew it intrinsically. Talk of spells and potions and practice, words Steve could not understand but soldiered through regardless. There was a point to this, he knew. There was always a point to the things Natasha does.

 _The Cosmic Entities._

 _Death, Entropy, Infinity, Eternity._

He paused, then. Eyes landing on familiar diagrams.

Loki's scrawl had gone jagged here, lapping over figures and old script with little precision or real direction. Yet, for all that Frigga's notes called with every flicker of his eyes, he found himself unable to read it all through.

 _Bursting blue, and pulsing. Johann Schmidt and the arrogance that had consumed him long before the power did._

He flipped through those pages, eyes unfocused on anything except getting away.

He had no use for what would be written there. The tesseract was on Asgard, and Loki was here.

It meant nothing.

 _"He's manipulating us."_

He stops on the very last page, blank of anything except Loki's handwriting.

It was in English.

 _—for the falls of Marmora forever cascade into the yawning trenches of the nether. For Innangard, the heart of the realm eternal, has always been secure and thus, has become complacent and her citizens remain ignorant. The eternities have called upon the death of their budding universe, and we, the Gods, now fall at their mercy, for they had not perceived the evilness wrought by their whims._

 _For every power created, Yggdrasil will pull forth from its breast a creature of equal wanting._

* * *

He'd gone home still bundled in the wraps of Loki's threadbare medical kit.

The kid had gone off to bed shortly after he'd fixed him up, as unassuming as always. He'd been up when Steve had gotten to him, staring at the fire licking through the small opening in the glass window.

He was relieved for it, if nothing else. The smoke had blotted out the street, and the screams had been loud enough that Loki hadn't heard anything he wouldn't have been allowed to.

Steve knew, of course, that Loki would be visited in the morning, SHIELD specialists and Asgardian doctors keen on keeping Loki's secrets hidden before the spell (or whatever it truly was) could break before its time.

It was crucial to recovery, according to them.

He sighed, hugging his good arm close to chest. The fire had baked off the worst of the chill, but autumn had been long coming, and the nighttime had since settled fully, pulling the temperature to a sharp drop.

He was, after all, only human.

(And he tries not to think about it, the days preceding. The grimy footage of an opened window and Loki in his thin pants and tee, staring out as if the chill hadn't mattered, hadn't truly bothered him in the slightest. It was hard for Steve still, accepting Loki as other. Even Thor got cold in autumn wind).

His apartment was dark when he arrived, save the lone flickering bulb left on in his kitchenette. A habit from before the war, before the serum, when darkness had meant others hiding within it. Ready to strike him for being slighter than they were. Different.

Kids were cruel, the ambitious, crueler. How else could they have proved themselves than buffing up against someone who was meant to be lesser, anyway?

The remnants of that far off yesteryear bug off with smug certainty, leaving him hollowed within. They, those boys and those men, were as dead as he had been, going into the ice in the end.

"Captain."

He stops in the entryway of his kitchen, back stiff at the sound of the voice. A grumbling gasp he'd recognize anywhere.

"Thor."

It was as much of a greeting as Steve was willing to give, angered still.

Thor inclines his head, only just. The movement so reminiscent of Loki it stings.

"I have come bid you hello and my thanks, if you will have me"  
Lumbering, the polite mask mangled by the expectance in his stance. Thor was a prince, and for the first time in a long while, Steve can clearly see it.

"Coffee?"

He offers, because that's what he always offers guests. He knew it worked as much on Thor as it did on him, but he didn't really care.

"It will not be necessary"

Thor says. Takes one gracious step back and plops down on Steve's only other table seat.

"I bring word for you as well,"

Steve nods along to that, not really finding the words in him to respond. Thor takes that as an o-k, drives right over the usual pleasantries and into the focus of their topic today. Loki. _Of course_.

"Mother…informs me that you and the Lady Natasha are to be my brother's caretakers"

"We are,"

Steve amends, marking his way through the kitchen. Something sweet to calm his temper— he'd never had much time for leisure after the war had begun, but time with Loki had quickly gotten him into a daily rhythm he could abide by, other than his responsibilities with SHIELD and the Avengers initiative. He liked sweet things, that hadn't changed, and his former apprehension of new packaging came unfounded with the realization that most everything remained similar, if not for the extension in longevity.

 _Better this way._

(And he thought, "if only these things existed before the war" but the war was gone and he was in the now, and he had to accept that). He settles the milk in a pan on his gas stove, mixing absently as Thor seems to mull over his words, picking and choosing his response.

"…I've come to warn you,"

Steve pauses at this, hand just barely grasping the wooden ladle he'd been using to stir the milk. Thor doesn't seem to notice. Thor just soldiers on.

"My brother,"

He starts, and Steve can hear him pull at his leathers, nervous, in a way.

"He is dangerous."

This pulls Steve up short. The milk bubbles in the pan, sloshing with every lick of the flame but Steve does not see it, eyes staring resolutely into the adjacent wall, mind blank save for the words Thor spoke of his own brother.

And it's not New York that comes to mind, though New York had happened just one year ago. It's not the devastation of the city, the loss of lives, or the fact that it was Loki at the helm. What he remembers is something smaller. The twinge of his muscles as he shifts over, reaching for powdered cocoa. The burns on his arms from the raging fire that had begun because Thor had struck Mjolnir in a fit of rage he called despair, and the way he'd talked himself out of it with a claim of ignorance.

What comes to mind instead, the seed planted by Thor's words are his brother's steady hands, thin and light as he dressed Steve's wounds because he was _there_. The kindness in his smile, wavering with every grit of Steve's teeth and his reassurance that he knew what he was doing, even if Steve hadn't ever asked.

The knowledge that, though he knew exactly what Thor meant, he refused to believe it on impulse. Because from what he'd seen and heard and now _knows_ ….

"Why tell me _that_?"

Thor pauses, as if he hadn't expected to be questioned. When Steve turns to look at him, his head is bowed, and a frown mars his lips so deep it could almost be called a scowl.

"I assumed mother had told you of his deeds on Asgard and Jotunheim,"

Thor says flatly, brows drawn. Steve looks back at his pot of boiling milk, adds his cocoa and takes it off the stove before he truly burns it. He had a feeling he'd need the drink now, if anything.

"She did."

Thor's frown reaches his eyes with its ferocity, something Steve hasn't ever seen from the God. He takes it in stride. He's seen worse, anyway.

"It is not that I do not trust you, or my brother,"

It's placating. Almost condescending. Steve takes a gulp from his mug, burns the top of his tongue and thanks himself for it. The pain distracts him from his own bubbling irritation.

"But… you do not know him as I do,"

He thinks on those words, hearing none of what follows after. Thor is going on a tangent now, listing his reasons and doubts and sorrows. He's as confused as the rest of the world is, clearly. And he has only enough brain to take it up with him instead of his mother, who had orchestrated this.

"I'll have to stop you there,"

Indignation, little hidden by the curiosity peeking through. Steve had never thought of Loki and Thor as brothers, not before now, when it was so exceedingly clear.

Thor runs a hand through his hair, shaggy at the ends, matted as if he hadn't had the chance to properly wash it. Steve turns away.

"I haven't known him as long as you have, I'm not that old, and Loki hasn't been here long, anyway"

The chair Thor sits on creaks, and Steve finds himself moving back to the side where the shelves are, the drawer by his hip where he keeps his cutlery. Thor wasn't known for his good temper, and Steve wasn't sure what he had to say would be welcomed.

"But I like to think I'm not dumb."

There's a flash outside, seen through the slit in the window above his kitchen sink. The grumble of thunder soon follows.

"I don't know him like you do Thor, but I do know him. Right now, that Loki you think you know? He's gone."

The crackle of lightning rattles him to the bones, but he stands firm, looks Thor in the eyes and waits out the temper tantrum. Thor's grounding out at him, protests of anger and annoyance and his own refusal to accept the obvious.

It's while waiting that Steve realizes with stunning clarity, Thor does not know. At least, Thor does not realizes what has happened fully.

"Have you even talked to the Queen?"

Thor faces him abruptly, blue eyes cold as the lightning he likes to wield. From beside him, Mjolnir stirs quietly.

"My mother and I have spoken, I have come here from her chambers in your SHIELD."

Cold words belied all of his impatient anger, and none of the compassion Steve had come to expect from him. With a pang, he realizes, however angry he might've been at the god, so was the god with him, and his mother, SHIELD and everyone involved with this thing.

"Thor, Loki doesn't— he's not like you remember him—"

"Do you think I do not **_know_**?"

Thor's standing now, Mjolnir tight in his grasp. Outside, it starts to rain.

"My brother… Loki is not as he used to be, and that has been fact for as long as he has been lost to Asgard. When he fell from the bridge that day, he has been lost since then, I _know_ this."

Slowly, Steve places his mug down, lays his palm flat against the opening of the drawer behind his back. Thor looked stricken.

"He told me thus. He told me himself, when he was imprisoned in Asgard. He told me himself, _Captain_."

Thor spat his title like it was acid, and Steve felt as if he were in a free-fall.

Frigga had told him— them all— that Loki hadn't talked of his past under Odin's watch. She'd said he was paranoid of it, without his Seidr, the gatekeeper could watch any conversation and he had been _careful_.

"I know my own brother, Steven."

Thor's words come tiredly. Outside, it continues to rain.

"That is why I am here. Not to fight, not to be a burden. Our mother knows us, yes, but she does not know him as well as _I_ ,"

There's a pause then, the quietness breached only the pouring of the rain.

Slowly, Steve gathers his mug, cradles it close to his lips. The mix had cooled, but he takes a sip anyway.

"Tell me,"

He says later on, when the rain has pattered off and his mug lay empty in the sink.

"Tell me _everything_."

* * *

When he opens the door, the first thing he sees is Loki, svelte fingers lining the thick of the room's curtains, looking outside for what seems to be the first time in weeks.

"Hey,"

He says, kicking off his boots and walking in. Loki's unsurprised by his sudden appearance, waves him off while pushing his cheek against the glass.

Steve frowns, walking up to the God and deciding to take a peek himself. There's nothing he can make out in particular, at least, nothing he would think could draw Loki's attention. He's about to ask after it, curious of the way Loki seems so invested, but then Loki puts a hand over his mouth, effectively silencing him.

"There's a man there, in the third building behind that one,"

He points out, whispering the words low enough that even Steve has to strain himself to hear. Loki taps a finger on the glass, smiling slightly. As if he were amused.

"I don't think he's noticed you yet, he's busy right now."

Loki pulls away from the window, then. Draws the curtains, and drenches the Apartment back into its seemingly perpetual state of darkness. His smile spreads then, only just, but wider than Steve has seen it in a while. It's a stark contrast to the rings around his eyes, dark and mocking in its presence. As always, Steve pretends not to have noticed them.

"You saw a man?"

Loki nods, resting against the cushions of his window bench. He stifles a yawn, but his shoulders sag lowly in fatigue. Steve doesn't mention it, even though he wants to. It's against protocol.

"He is spying on me, always is this time of week."

Steve's eyes widen, but Loki seems so unperturbed, waving him off.

"It's alright, he is amusing enough. He hates me,"

A grin, as if this were something to laugh at.

"You brought me something?"

The plastic in his hand crinkles, and Steve is startled by it, having almost forgotten the plastic was there.

 _Amber's bakery_ , it reads, emboldened in yellow and navy blue. One small remnant from the 40's, when it had been new. Steve's go-to since he'd awoken here, and eventually, Loki's preferred as well.

"I got you something plain, if you don't mind. You haven't been really interested in sweets lately,"

Loki's grin widens into something almost cheerful, and Steve is struck by just how _young_ he looks then.

"Thank you."

Thin fingers grasp his, not to take the plastic but as his own form of appreciation. It's the farthest Loki has ever allowed himself to do in terms of physical affection. Steve thinks he understands it, even if Loki didn't truly, yet.

It's later on in the day, with twilight fast approaching and supper drawing near that Steve asks him if he'd like for him to cook. He hadn't done it too often in all the times that he'd known the god, but Loki seemed to enjoy his cooking well enough before, and Steve was hard-pressed to order take-out, as that seemed to be all Loki would eat these days.

He hadn't expected anything overly expressive, Loki wasn't really the sort. He had, however, expected not to be outright rejected.

"I've had a good lunch today, Steven. Your baked good has only exacerbated my satiation."

Steve blinks back at him, taken aback. He tries not to let it show too much, but Loki has always been perceptive, and the God reaches out, placating smile in place.

"It is quite alright. Regardless, it _is_ getting quite late,"

He points at the overhead clock lining the long wall above his flat screen television.

The smile never leaves his lips.

"Oh,"

Steve bundles up the book he'd been reading, gathers his coat from where it'd been thrown over the side of the couch. Loki gives him a short wave goodbye.

"Godspeed, Steven."

He says, a word he'd picked up and taken to using after he'd encountered it in one of Natasha's novels. A cheeky smile overtakes his features, barely discernible from the normal blankness of his expression. It was only the fact that Steve'd spent so much time with him, that he knows to take it for what it is. A try at a joke. Something hearty to send him off.

A distraction.

"You too,"

Steve leaves without preamble, toeing on his shoes and walking out the door with barely a wave back in his haste. He feels Loki's eyes on him, long after the door has closed.

* * *

He goes by his morning routine normally. Coffee— more for the taste than the boost. Then joggers on and a ten mile run through the quieter streets of the inner city's pseudo-suburbia.

The sun shines through in fleeting rays of gold and pink, the air just barely warm in the face of the coming winter. The trees sway with the low winds, lone leaves rustling off skeletal branches and painting the sidewalk in the colors of autumn.

Red, yellow, orange.

He counts the colors as he runs, relieves mind of memory and focuses only on his track and the need to sidestep the occasional civilian as he goes through. It is perhaps this distraction that allows him to stop short, shocked out of his mind when a figure jumps down from the grills in a nearby apartment, hair coiffed and dressed in all black.

It's his face, and Steve's own thankful recognition of it that keeps him from completing the jab at his throat.

"Clint!"

But he's startled enough, and the name comes out more shrill then welcoming. Clint grins anyway.

"We've been trying to contact you on your cell, you hadn't been picking up so Nat got me to rush on after you. Which, by the way, what the fuck? You run like a freight train!"

To add to dramatics, Clint bends down, holding his knees in mock-windedness.

The sound of the chopper, and the chatter it brought with it, gives him away. Steve points that out, but Clint only shrugs, walking ahead of him, back the way he came.

"I mean, you didn't notice it coming, not my fault I wanted to milk it."

Steve frowns, but doesn't say much about it. Clint wasn't…wrong, after all.

"If I were you,"

He starts, when they're already halfway up the apartment buildings fire escape.

"I'd buckle up. Fury's being prissy— well, prissy-er than you usual, you know what I mean."

Steve's shoulders stiffen, but he shakes the mounting apprehension off, waiting to cast judgement only after he knows what exactly was going on.

"Well, your report came in and he's worried, I guess."

Clint's voice hardens then, his grip suspiciously white around the railings. He turns on just, head over his shoulder and eyes narrowed, though not unkindly. Merely scrutinizing.

"He thinks you're at risk of being compromised. He wants to check."


	9. Accusations and Bitterness

"My brother is not as he was in boyhood,"

Night had fallen thickly, darkening the small of his apartment to one single point in his narrow kitchenette, where the bronzing metal of an antique candle-holder kept lit their impromptu meeting. It was not for the lack of electricity, though Steve would not have missed it, either way. But for the visibility he knew he had, him always being under SHEILDs watchful eyes.

Thor moves in his seat, arms folded over his small dining table. Steve knew, of course, that SHIELD would already have detail on Thor's coming here, never mind their earlier conversation. But what Thor had to say now, though he knew he would be questioned about it later down the line, he had to keep secreted away, at least, for as long as Loki remained vulnerable.

"He will not remember it overmuch, I do not think. Not as I do, nor as my Mother, who carries it so close to breast, still."

Thor pauses, mulling over his words. In his hands, a silken cloth much like the one Natasha had given to Loki earlier at the Queens behest. Only it was green, a shade only slightly darker than that of Loki's armor during the invasion.

Steve doesn't ask about it, and soon after, Thor pockets it between the folds of his leathers, sighing throughout.

"You will have noticed the Allmother's protectiveness of Loki, yes?"

A nod of his head, and Thor is slumping into his chair, frown seemingly etched into his features.

"Forgive me,"

He murmurs, dragging a hand through wiry blonde hair. Beneath his fingernails, Steve notices, the soot from the fire clings thickly.

"I know not— know not how to speak to you, tell the story as need be told for your understanding."

Another pause. Thor tries for a smile. Steve didn't have the heart in him to tell him to stop, however painful the expression seemed. The idea that Thor was unaffected, if nothing else, seemed to…calm the God. As if he were scared of feeling too much.

Steve tried not to think about those connotations, tucking them away for later.

"My brother,"

There, a spark within the flecks of his blue eyes. Mirth.

"He has always been the better storyteller between us two. You have noticed, yes?"

He rubs at his eyes, Thor. Takes a long breath, as if he were steeling himself for whatever it was he had left to say.

"This was…centuries past. We had been boys then, travelling our way back from a visit to our uncle, the King Freyr of Vanaheim. Skidbladnir was a powerful ship, capable of travelling _ginnungagap_ , the— the nothingness between Mother's home realm and Asgard— so, I would assume that is why they'd attacked us so, despite the action being so _unlike_ that of an Aesir,"

Steve straightens at this, eyes wide and lips pursed thin. Thor smiles at him bitterly.

"No, you've heard me right, good Captain. _Aesir_. It was an act Father has tried desperately to rid from our history. They'd been lucky, you see. Had managed to kill several of the trained Einherjar guarding my brother's door before they'd gotten to him themselves."

"…Loki?"

Thor waves him off almost flippantly, but he was as pale as Steve felt, expression pinched for all that he tried not to show it.

"I do not know of the details, exactly. What I do know is that it had been a work of betrayal. Several of our guardsman had turned on us along our journey back from Freyr's court, had let those traitors onboard our ship, despite their sworn oaths to the Allfather and the royal family of Asgard."

The pause then was deliberate, Thor taking the smallest of sips from the bottled water beside him. Between them, the flame flickers, candlelight dancing in the face of nonexistent wind, reacting, perhaps, to the shift in the rooms' humidity.

"Mother refuses to tell me why exactly, but I would assume it had to do with Loki's recent development. He'd begun the practice of seidr, you see, at our Mother's behest. No more than 500 years old and he was a prodigy!"

When he thinks of seidr— _magic_ — he can only remember Stuttgart, the blue of Loki's scepter as he trounced all over that crowd of civilians. Powerful blasts, like something from Tony's repulsors if those were any more powerful. Magical. Loki now, trapped and stripped of his memories, he didn't think of seidr, didn't really believe in it, as far as Steve could tell. It was…disconcerting, to say the least. From the way Frigga, and now, Thor, spoke of his abilities, it sounded as if seidr had been such an intrinsic part of the kid, before his memories had been stripped away.

"So… so you're saying they targeted him because of that? Because he started using… magic?"

Thor shrugs some, hands spread out beside him. The frown he wears is a little smaller now, and does nothing to hide the thunderers own seeming confusion.

"I know not. After all these centuries, the— the surviving perpetrators, they refuse to speak."

A heavy sigh. The way Thor slumps into the table has his head very nearly breaking through the old wood.

"Father has tried to work it all out, in recent years especially with Loki being the way he is but,"

"But no such luck."

Thor gives him a smile. Something quiet; small in a way Steve would never have expected of him.

"But he _is_ trying."

Like an assurance. Whether it was meant for Steve or Thor himself, Steve didn't really know. Didn't know if he wanted to know, honestly.

"Ah but as I was staying, that is but the first reason!"

Jolly as the words seem to be, there's a dark cloud over Thor's mood the rest of their meeting. Nothing so forward, nothing overtly obvious, but there nonetheless. There in the way his smiles never quite break past a flickering twitch, there in the way his brows remained drawn, his eyes staring into the wall above his head, or whatever else there was to see behind him. There in the way Thor refuses to look him in the eye, to speak to him so _directly_ as he had beforehand.

There in the way he bows whenever he mentions Loki by name.

Steve wants to know, _needs_ to know what it is the God had figured out.

All the same, there lives in him now a festering fear. Something like a slow spreading gangrene, greening and tearing and breaking down the confidence he had; the hopes he still clung to.

"Goodbye, Son of Rogers."

He's gone in a swirl of thick red and the ring of swiveling metal, lightning singeing the air where he once stood. Standing out here, atop the small metal balcony of Steven's home, the winds are damp with the taste of coming rain.

Thor's parting words hang around him like the thickest of chains.

 _"I will have to see to my father, whatever his progress has been thus far. He always has plans for such things, as Allfather to the nine._ Always _."_

* * *

"So, we've got ourselves in a bit of a pickle here, _Steven_."

Tony sits across from him, making a rather explicit interpretation of a man being choked out. By Fury, he'd guess, from the way Tony's eyes flicker constantly towards swishing black leathers and Fury's hands clasped white-knuckled behind his back.

"I can see you, Stark."

Tony shrugs, _'chillaxing'_ into his seat and sending Steve a wink from over the points of his boots. Fury doesn't quite sigh, but he's exasperated enough that Steve's already pointed himself through three different exit strategies and how he can make a grab for Tony (and really, whether he _should_ ) in the event that Fury pulls a gun on them. And really, knowing the director, knowing Tony… well.

Fury grumbles something under his breath. Probably a cuss. Sighs.

"Do you have _any_ idea what type of problems you've been causing me?"

Tony sits up just a little straighter in his seat.

"Well, not that I regret anything, but I assumed that was an everyday thing for you, Fury—"

"I was talking about Rogers."

Fury gives him a look then, one that has his eyes—well, eye narrowed to a dark slit.

 _"Oh."_

"Oh, indeed."

From over the meeting table, Tony twirls his finger over his ear, 'looney' he mouths, and it eases Steve. Kind of. Weirdly enough, it's the fact that Tony's in Fury-grabbing-range that has Steve's heckles rising, (even if whatever happens to the guy would be entirely his own fault), and not whatever threat Fury's about to dunk him over the head with.

"Look here."

Fury taps out a couple numbers on the glass tabletop, a projection immerging a short second after. The green of the imagery is disconcerting, but nothing unexpected from what he supposes is a magnified camera-recorder. What has him sitting up, narrow eyes a hairs breadth from the projection is—

"Holy shit, is that Loki?"

Steve looks up abruptly, eyes on Tony who's somehow managed to make his way over from the otherside of the table without Steve noticing. His arms are folded, and there's this tic in his jaw that Steve's sure Tony wasn't entirely consciously aware of.

"Yes."

Fury answers for him, leaning against the side of the table; arms folded as well.

"Nat's in there with him unsupervised? Where are the guards? I thought you had this thing under control?!"

And Tony was starting to sound really upset, cheeks a little ruddier than they had been just a while ago. Steve takes a breath, attempts to turn.

"Oh, I thought they were, too."

Fury's looking at him, something in his gaze that makes Steve feel…small. Like he'd done something wrong.

"What do you mean? Steve?"

Now Tony's looking at him, too. Brows furrowed, lips pursed. He looked almost like Pepper, those few times Steve had walked in on her during a meeting, or when she and Tony were arguing, (or even a mixture of both those circumstances, which were strangely more prevalent than either one or the other). Stressed and anxious, like she had a hand on a bomb and she didn't know how to work her way out of it.

Steve huffed at that; turned to face Fury fully.

"You promised Frigga you wouldn't be spying on him."

Faintly, he can hear Tony sputtering behind him.

"We weren't clear for audio-visual recordings, no. Far as I'm concerned, this here is entirely acceptable."

Steve tries to hide how much that irritates him, but he doubts he succeeds. Fury is giving him a look, like he was staring down the barrel of a gun and waiting for it to blow so he can test for how faulty it was. It had Steve's back straighten up a tad, his shoulders drawn with an exaggerated puff of his chest. Look bigger be bigger, the bigger you are, the more you command, or so the saying went.

"The queen won't be happy about that—"

"Then the queen should have thought about that before she drew up the contract."

Steve lifts an arm.

"Now, I get all the huffing and puffing and the mutual I-wanna-kill-you feelings but what I wanna know, and I think that's significantly more important cause I've got JARVIS basically hotwired into all of this, I'll find out even if you _don't_ want me to."

Steve turns. Tony is standing there, both arms spread wide, as if to encompass the entirety of the helicarrier. Even then, his eyes never leave them.

"What I wanna know is why we're discussing that madman, why Natasha's playing all goodie-goodie with him from the looks of that video and why he's not locked up with the power-stripped, criminally _insane!"_

Steve tries to talk. Fury beats him to it.

"That's classified."

" _Bullshit!_ I know it, _you_ know it. Steve's dog knows it, and _Steve_ _doesn't even have a dog!"_

"Tony."

Steve manages. Tony screeches, a bit unmanly, but entirely caught in the moment.

"No, no, _hell no!_ That psychopathic maniac wrecked his way through New York, literally murdered _thousands_ of people and you're just letting him off the leash in a goddamn— what is that? An _apartment block? House arrest?!_ That's— that— _insane doesn't even begin to cover it!"_

Steve takes a breath, tries to calm his mind from the thoughts rampaging within. It— all of this was classified. Tony didn't know. Hell, the better half of SHIELD _didn't know_. The literal hundreds of people involved with the project didn't even know more than a tenth of what Steve did, and even then, Steve didn't have the full picture.

"Look, Tony…"

"Don't you 'look, Tony' me, paint stripes, I risked my ass out there, watched that mass murdering assholes army squeeze its way through a portal in New York— one of the mostly densely populated cities in the world, might I add— and _kill_ people. _Thousands_ of _people_! You can't just—"

Tony was starting to work himself up, breaths coming in pants and this look in his eyes, like something feral. Steve reaches out.

"Sit your ass down, Stark."

Fury, arms still crossed; looming behind them like an impenetrable wall.

"I let you in this meeting because I wanted a second opinion."

Fury scoffs, as if he were regretting the idea already. His shoes scuffle against the tiled flooring, one long, grating drag at a time.

"I didn't bring you here to go on ahead and throw a _temper tantrum_."

Steve looks Tony over, the billionaire looking a little dazed now, eyes unfocused, up and elsewhere. Like he wasn't even here.

"Hey, Tony. Hey…"

Steve whispers, gently lowers him into a chair. Tony takes a shuddering breath in, hands gripping white around the armrest.

"Could you just— just stop for a moment?!"

Fury gives him a look over, one eye piercing through the thinness of his joggers and thin tee. Looks behind him, where Tony's head lolls, so seemingly out of it. Huffs again.

"You want some water?"

Steve says this quietly, one hand on Tony's shoulder, the other skimming the top of the table, trying to reach for the water bottle Tony'd brought with him earlier, still half empty from what he remembered; reaches it.

"Here."

Tony slowly takes a sip. Once. Twice. Takes a long, drawn gulp.

Shudders.

"Fuck."

He splashes the rest of the water across his face before letting the bottle drop to the floor. The clatter of plastic is barely audible amongst the sound of Tony's harsh breaths.

"Fuck you, Fury."

He groans, rubs at his eyes and tries to even his breathing out. Steve draws back.

"Fuck you too, Steve. Not telling me shit."

He lists into the side of the table, slumped in his chair like a weighted bag of potatoes.

"Now… explain."

Fury purses his lips, all but ready to argue. _"We've wasted enough time already."_ Steve could almost hear the words, as if Fury had spoken them himself. He shifts where his stands, grapples for a solution— anything to avoid another drawn-out, ultimately inconsequential argument.

"How about you just tell me why I'm here, and Tony, you wait until after and I'll tell you…myself."

Fury gives him a look, as does Tony, though the inventors is significantly more perturbed.

"…Fine."

Tony grunts, after a short while, leaning his head against his palm in some lame effort to look unaffected. Steve, being the man that he was, gracefully doesn't point that out.

"You,"

Fury starts, near-jabbing a hand in Steve's direction.

"You know shit."

Steve raises a brow, even as his fingers twitch, reaching for some invisible knife in his back pocket. There's nothing there, of course, but the motion is calming enough (from behind him, though, he can almost feel Tony's eyes on him, both brows raised and looking so smugly intrigued. He ignores that, even as it bothers him).

"You'll have to elaborate. _Sir_."

Fury frowns. Jabs a finger at the projection again. From behind, Steve can hear the near-silent squeak of the chair sagging into the table top.

"Natasha hasn't been giving me much information but she gives me enough. You, on the other hand, don't report shit. You expect me to believe you're all shit at your job and can't get basic answers from him? You're a people person, Steve, you'd at least have _opinions_."

Fury draws himself up, shoulders looking so impossibly broad.

"You spend more than half your free time with that sick fucker, which wouldn't be too concerning, if it weren't for the fact that minding that asshole is part of your assignment to begin with."

Fury takes a step toward him, frown just about reaching for his chin.

"You expect me to listen to your chicken shit excuse that you _don't know_ nothing, when you very _clearly_ do."

Steve, in the face of his frown, attempts for one of his own; not backing down in the slightest.

"Clint told me this was to be a mission report."

The hem of Fury's overcoat brushes his calf, and from how close they stand, Steve can already make it out. That look in his eyes, like red letters on a time bomb, ticking away the hours and minutes and seconds, waiting for the trigger to release.

Steve, in that moment, felt a lot like the village that bombs hidden in, just one moments from a blast; billowing fire and disaster.

"It is."

Fury seethes. Moves back only just.

"It's also a check-up."

His palm lays flat against the table, and the image of Natasha, now a ways from Loki, jacket thrown over her shoulders and a smile wide across her lips, fading into obscurity.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't throw you in a cellar for this, Captain America, 'cause I think I have enough reason to be suspicious of the way you've been trouncing around your _job assignment._ "

Steve looks him in that lone eye, attempts to dismantle his thoughts, even as he knew he was failing in kind.

"I'm the only person he talks to."

Steve says. Leaves it at that.

Fury looks away, arms folded behind his back.

"Get your ass outta here. Both of you."

Tony's behind him when the doors close, hands on his knees and panting hard. Steve's not entirely sure whether or not he's exaggerating most of it.

"You… you have so much explaining to do, Cap."

Steve frowns, but he doesn't contest this.

"Yeah."

He says instead, slowly beginning to walk away. Tony follows suit, walking fast to stick to his side.

"Yeah, I do."

* * *

He visits Loki that afternoon. Not his best decision by far but, well, he wanted to know. That he was alright, that was. Not that he doubted it he just… needed the reassurance.

Clint is mingling around the hallway when Steve enters, back against the door of one of the storage rooms.

"You know, I'd have thought you'd be a bit more sympathetic,"

He goes on, grinding the words through clenched teeth.

"Of the countless people who lost their lives because of _him_."

Steve pauses, hand clutching at his saddlebag, even as Clint begins to back away, eyes up and elsewhere.

"But Loki, I get it. He's charming, isn't he?"

Clint gives him a look, eyes like pale diamonds; sharp enough to draw blood, if only Steve were unlucky enough to graze a finger against its tip.

"You can't— can't help but listen."

Clint nods slowly, backs away into the shadows of the hallway. Steve barely gets a word in edgewise before he's disappeared completely.

 _"Your eyes Steve, they're as blue as mine."_

Steve makes his way quickly over to Loki's, nearly barrels through the door as soon as he's turned the key.

"You awake?"

He's breathing hard, eyes searching over the apartment. Lounge room empty. Kitchenette empty. Table untouched, dishes washed.

Steve quickly makes off towards Loki's bedroom, sees the door there left ajar.

"Hey—"

Loki. Head bowed, fingers clenching around hard-bound papyrus. New, the tome he was holding. Shoulders hunched, and knees drawn to his chest, Steve didn't need to look at his expression to know… know what he was feeling.

"…L— I was worried."

He gulps some. Slowly patters into the room.

"I didn't see you outside, and— and the lights were on."

Loki's hand moves, drags through lanky black hair. Shaking. Shaking, even as he's tucking them under that tome, away from view.

"Swell evening to you, Steven."

The tome lifts slightly, falling over from the tops of his knees and it's as if Loki barely registers it.

"What… what happened?"

Steve asks, slowly lowering himself beside the God. Looks into his eyes, such a deep, startling green.

Loki purses his lips. Attempts for a smile.

"I am sorry, Steven."

He says quietly, looks down at where his fingers lay, resting now against his thighs.

"I know not at all."

Steve nods some, makes to pick up the tome, maybe put it away properly for later. Loki… he got like this sometimes, it was nothing too bad.

Loki stops him before he can, svelte fingers cool against his wrist.

"This is difficult for you, your assignment to me."

Steve looks up quickly. Loki's features are more relaxed now, if a little sadder. His smile, though small, looks a little more real.

"I am sorry Steven, truly."

Loki backs slowly away, wrapping long arms around his knees. Like a child, almost. Young and sad and pretending he was neither of those things.

"I hope one day you will forgive me."


	10. Answers

It's almost surprising how his first instinct immediately after leaving the Apartments is not to run everything by with SHIELD. The first thing he does do, however, isn't surprising at all.

"You being here gets weirder the more I think about it— no offense."

Steve looks up. Tony is currently eyeing him over from where he's sat, some ways away from the clear floor-to-ceiling window lining the walls of his penthouse. The cushions that'd been on the couch behind him are scattered on the floor around his feet, and though his eyes are burning holes into Steve's skull, his fingers have yet to cease typing out the various codes that would— according to him— get Jarvis access into SHIELD.

"You're playing games with government information, I'm not sure how to think about that myself— no offense."

Tony sends him a quick grin, one highlighted by the flash of the clear screens sat in front of him.

"I never liked what the dude did to NY, and I'm never forgiving him for that— again, no offense, personal motto and all that— but I like the spunk he gave ya. All teeth and claws now, huh Cap?"

Steve shrugs. He didn't understand half of what Tony'd just said (and he wasn't particularly on for deciphering his lingo at all), but they'd been sitting like this for hours now, Tony working at his technology and Steve leaning against the clear window, eyes on the buildings dotting the streets, as-large and larger than Stark tower itself, his mind up and elsewhere, wondering through memories of his past, and Loki and the agents hounding after him still, long after he'd left The Apartments.

"Ya know, Cap, I kinda get it. Not the kill people and rule earth thing cause, wow, rude— just the you caring for him bit, yanno?"

When Steve looks back up, it's a little darker out and Tony's looking him over again. There's…something. In his expression, at least. Not as loud or as cross as it had been when they'd first decided to talk it all out. Steve frowns. Sits up a little bit.

"You're giving me a look like I've kicked your non-existent puppy, but I'm serious here, Cap— Steve. Really."

The screens he'd been working on fade into the air, and the whirl of electronics that had been beeping through the empty spaces in the room come to a hilt. Suddenly (though it really shouldn't have been) all is quiet.

"You're a soldier, I can get that. You're kinda all for that patriotic save-the-day stuff. I mean, I'm a hero too and all that, but I'm not about to bend over backwards to make the government kiss my ass and allow me to save people. I do what I want."

Steve stares.

He just…he stares. There's something there in the way Tony's speaking, the way he's looking at him. Steve knows it's important, he can feel it all the way to his bones and yet….

"What are you trying to say?"

Tony smiles. Soft. Vulnerable. His eyes don't meet Steve's, not really, and when they do, he's quick to turn away.

"It's the middle of the night, Steve. You came here as soon as you realized something wasn't right. I can't ever do that, even if I had to. Not for him."

Steve feels it then, a frown pulling at his lips; the way his brows draw into each other, pulling at the bridge of his nose. His heart beats harshly against his chest, hammers with every one of Steve's breaths.

"He doesn't deserve this."

"And I believe you. Really. I do."

Tony doesn't move forward, but he's standing now, a little more in front of where he'd been sitting. His eyes are trained on the windows behind Steve, the smoothened top of the ledge and the long, long way down.

"We all have fears, Steve. Grievances. He's both of mine."

When Tony finally looks at him, his eyes are glazed but here.

He's smiling.

"But that's just me. And I know you, Steve, even if you're all buddy-buddy with everyone, you know what's right and what's wrong, and you do what your heart tells you."

"Tony…"

"You won't be here if it wasn't worth it. I know you said you'd tell me— and I'll hold you to that— but I can wait. I'm not gonna force you to fess up or anything, I'm not the feds."

Steve attempts to stand up, a quashing low in his chest. He doesn't know what to feel, but the way Tony's looking over at him, it makes him think more. Of New York, the decisions he's made so far with Loki and SHIELD and Natasha, and all the variables that had led him on the path that'd brought him here to Tony's penthouse when really, he could've—should've just gone home.

"I'm your friend, Steve, and from the looks of you, he's your friend, too. I don't trust him, and I don't trust SHIELD, but I trust you. If you think something's up, even if it's completely, totally ridiculous, I'm here for ya."

Something glints, then. A flash in the dark, pulsing beneath the swell of Tony's enclosed hand.

"Catch!"

He hears, and it's only be reflex that Steve has the drive between his palms and not shattered through the glass and lost in the maze of the streets below.

"What's this, Tony?"

Tony's already looking at him when Steve looks back up, hands in his pockets and smile like something smug.

"You asked me for files, right? That's it. All of it in that drive. Don't destroy the planet, kay? I have a nice thing going down here, booze and Pep and science stuff."

He's not mocking, though, even with his tone. If Steve had been in any other mindset, maybe he'd have even hugged him for it.

"Now, don't get all mushy on me Cap'n, you know how I feel about the touchy-feely. I'm not a Romeo— not for you, I mean— so no touch me, I don't like."

Tony's hands are up, and his grin is wide, if a bit thin. Steve finds himself grinning with him, small as it was.

"Thanks, Tony. Really."

"It's a pleasure, Cap."

* * *

Snow pelts into the ground in clumps thick enough to cover up the soil in a matter of minutes. According to the weather forecast, not only has winter come early, but it's come in a fury never before experienced, not since the war, since Steve had been a boy with asthma, nose sticking through the curtains because his lungs hurt to play in the cold.

It brings back memories.

"For the first time ever, Steve Rogers seems to want to see me outside of work."

Natasha's chosen to be casual for now, apparently. Her red hair's tied back, stray strands brushing shortly against her neck as she walks beside him, hands tucked into the pockets of her winter coat. She hasn't worn any makeup and it softens her image up, even if only by a bit. She doesn't smile when she turns to him, but she looks content enough, and that's about all Steve was really looking for from her, really.

"Wanna tell me why you're brooding today, big guy?"

Steve looks up for a little while, eyeing the clouds as snow continues to drift down, gray and white and as dark as the world around them.

"Something's come up,"

Steve whispers softly, following after a frosted petal as it settles onto the pavement in front of him, a mottled brown-red, and about the only bit of color this part of the city.

Natasha pauses, lips pursing as she gazes at him. Through his periphery, he can see the way she readjusts herself, straightening her spine and tilting her chin, trying for something not so soft but comforting for a soldier like him. It's calculated, cold, and yet, still somehow sweet.

"You weren't at the Apartments today. Or yesterday, for that matter."

Steve smiles, a crooked thing he's sure Natasha sees right through. Crazy as it sounded, just the thought of it already had his chest constricting, stomach flipping; adrenaline pulsing through his veins. It's been days now, about the longest he's been away from Loki and everyone involved with the project, save Tony. Of course Natasha would know. Of course anyone would, really.

"You're asking for why?"

They're moving again, slower than they had just earlier on. Natasha aligns her steps with his.

"You can say that."

She says.

They follow the turns in the streets, kicking through the clumping snow and the dirt thrown over from the sidewalk. People pass them by, some staring and some not. No one bothers them.

"He remembers Thor, you know."

Natasha's steps don't falter, though her gaze has shifted from the gray of the walkway to his own, green like summer grass, wide and curious; about as genuinely vulnerable as she could be around him.

"So you say,"

They take a fork in the road, one that leads them through a back-alley that had been there since Steve had been a child.

"He says he remembers a lot of things, actually. His mother, brother, his face, his name."

They pause for a bit, the sides of the apartments casting a long shadow over them. The early-winter sunlight is concealed, dully prickling through their vision a long minutes' walk from where they stood.

Natasha takes a breath.

"What did he say to you?"

Steve squares his shoulders. Through the thin slot of nothing covering the top of the back alleyway, the snowfall begins to slow.

"Absolutely nothing."

* * *

It's a long moment before Steve speaks again. In that long moment, Loki takes the time to slowly him over, skin so-so pale and a tremor in his hands as he eases himself against his bedframe. His eyes are wide, and wet and greener than they have ever been, these long days-weeks-months he's been here in the Apartments.

"I don't get it, you're not making any sense right now."

Loki smiles, a fragile thing. His eyes flitter over the room, and Steve follows after him. His room is a mess, so entirely unlike how it normal was, pristinely— almost always scarily clean. All his furniture had been and his books were left scattered across the floor, some pages torn, some half burnt and others staining ink into the green carpet. His closet is open and emptied, and there's cracks lining up the walls.

Steve turns to face Loki abruptly, his heart in his throat, pulse racing.

"Seidr, it is a powerful thing; fragile, too. Very… so very sensitive to my emotions."

Steve feels a churning then, deep in his belly. A powerful sense of dread ripping through his body.

He takes a step back.

"Already you turn, yet I do not detest you for this. Worry not."

Loki chuckles wetly, thin fingers cradling the gauntness of his cheek. Stray strands of hair stick to his lashes, and the dryness of his lip, yet he seems not to care.

Steve swallows. Attempts for words.

His voice dies in his throat before he can speak any of them.

"You have questions, yes? Questions upon questions upon questions. Yet, it is not my Mother who you blame, though she is the one who has put me here. It is not my brother, who you bear arms with in combat, who has contributed to the decision to imprison me here. It is not my— my father who decreed that I be placed here."

Loki stands on shaking legs, voice croaking; his smile feeble at best.

Steve takes another step back.

Loki laughs.

"It is not even me, though you prepare yourself to run in fear. Or is it?"

The door is locked when Steve reaches out, and there are no windows in Loki's room— a precaution then. The walls themselves, though plain seeming, are reinforced. Standing here now, Steve is entirely cornered, and entirely at Loki's mercy.

Loki, for his part, looks so very amused by him. So very strangely, insanely amused. Steve takes a breath. Slowly in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Loki laughs again.

"Here I thought you'd liked me. But that is just vulnerability, no? Your human psychology permits you this, the pity of a wounded animal, even one that had previously bitten you."

Steve squares his shoulders, grabs at the air in his lungs and the voice in his chest not entirely lost to him.

"You remember."

He whispers, voice weak amidst the thickness of the air.

"I remember everything and nothing at all. I remember I've been put here, and I remember why, but I do not remember why I had done so. My memories are with me, yet I am lost to me."

Loki spreads out his arms, a theatrical smile pulling at his lips in a thin, grotesque veneer of utter enjoyment.

"I am a puppet, as the All-father dictated I be. Are you not amused?"

He sees them in the air, thick misting green tendrils slithering over the woolen carpet and the silk of his bedsheets, the cracks in the walls and the torn pages sticking out of his scattered books. Seidr.

Magic.

"Are you not amused?"

The Seidr bursts through the air in flashing greens and blues, powerful and harmless, whipping through the enclosed room in quick gusts of air that brush against Steve without really moving him at all.

"Why?"

Steve asks, and Loki's expression twists; the over-bright, near-manic amusement easing quickly into something somber, and pulling Loki into a slow fall that has him settling with his knees on the carpeted floor, green-green eyes gazing over his hands, almost like he couldn't even believe himself.

"I don't know."

He says quietly, sounding suddenly, so very vulnerable.

Loki's voice cracks when he tries to speak again, and he laughs at this the way he'd laughed then, standing on Tony's tower as his army had swept through the streets of New York. Killing and killing and killing. People, themselves, every single thing in sight.

Steve slowly eases himself away from the wall, stepping tentatively towards Loki.

Loki barely looks up to greet him.

"I know my name."

He says slowly, voice so low Steve has to strain his ears to hear him.

"I know what I am, where I am from."

The tome he'd been reading sits by the side of Loki's feet, pages flat against the carpet and its leather-bound back facing the ceiling. Loki slowly reaches for it, fingers trembling.

"As ever,"

He starts, slowly looking up. He wears no smile this time. He just looked…tired. Sad and angry and so very alone. It is the truest expression Steve has ever seen from him.

"Odin knows how to dismantle me with his words, even when he is not here at all."

The books lands with a thump before Steve's feet, the pages flipping through the air and to a close as it skids to a stop upon reaching him.

"I've spelled it."

Loki tells him, voice suddenly very far away.

"You can read through, if you like. There are such amusing things he says of me, especially after I'd fallen into the nether. It's really quite educational, quite…surprising."

* * *

"What are you going to do about SHIELD?"

There's a pause. The laughter that follows, Steve's sure, is his own.

"I don't know."


	11. Interlude II

His strength is waning.

It is not immediate, his weakness approaches him tamely, a poison cradled in a stagnant pool: slowly moving, slowly spreading.

For so long, he does not notice this.

Then it comes to him, all so suddenly and all at once.

"Prince."

There is a saying, that weakness is only ever felt when one is in need of strength. This day, Loki finds himself standing in a barren cell, stripped of all power as the air around him warms to burning, panting and bent over as a firework of color fills his vision.

 _Green. Green-blue. Gold. Brown._

 _Red._

He feels first the _thirst_. The weight of his tongue, dry within his mouth. The cracks upon his lips, split-skin torn and red and bleeding. He reaches out a hand, fingers pressing against the wall of his cell as the pull runs its course through him, blanketing over his natural defenses and taking from him what power within himself he still had.

"Pitiful thing you are."

The _yearning_ , he feels second. When his fingers claw into the white of the wall, pulling paint and brick and _seidr_ as his own is taken from him. Weakened within his cell, bound by the All-father and condemned by those he had once called his own; for so long, he had not known— had not _realized_.

 _"You hate me so?"_

The man behind him was one he only vaguely recognized, a flittering visage from the memories of his gilded childhood. An old man he was, stout and prideful just by the way he stood, back straight and fingers caved over the hilt of his sword.

Loki gasps for breath, a low bubbling in his chest, pushing through and into his throat.

"Oh, Einherjar, you betray the throne so?"

He laughs. That man. _Loki_. Them both, truly.

"I betray no one, kin-slayer."

Loki laughs again, louder than the last. Stilling the room and the thoughts wandering through his head. He's sure that by now the alarms have rung, that the All-father has deployed whatever guard he could expend to secure his _most-beloved pawn_. Yet, he fears it is all too late, for the colors he sees have already deepened, pulling his focus from the clawing sensation within to the _everywhere_ around him. The air burning him, the dryness of his tongue and flesh. The essence of his will, his very _existence_ , slipping so quickly away from him.

"How do you do it? Take from one such as I?"

Before long, Loki finds himself crumpled onto the floor, back against the wall as his would-be-killer slips into the shadows. There, in the dark, he spots a weathered smile.

"I only amplify what has already been done to you, but you already know that, yes? It is in your nature, ever knowing what fate befalls you. How the All-father must have _laughed_."

 _"Pitiful creature."_

He hears the guards long before he sees them, clanking metal armor and the screaming of his name like a curse. The battle lust lays thick around them. And yet, Loki finds himself unable to conjure even the smallest lick of amusement.

The colors have deepened now, have darkened to an almost-black as they slowly seep into the walls surrounding him.

Seidr. _His_ seidr.

"Hello."

He whispers softly. His words come out as merely a puff of air.

The clawing in his chest has dulled by now, but it is a different type of relief that welcomes him.

"The Prince! Call the Prince!"

The Einherjar pour into his cell, all different shades of black and gray. Yet, as ever, this help is late.

"Fools."

Loki says, and the world blackens around him.

Thus ends his last memory of the _before_.


End file.
